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PURCHASED  BY  THE 
HAMILL  MISSIONARY  FUND 


BV  2060  .S72  1919 

Speer,  Robert  E.  1867-1947. 

The  Gospel  and  the  new  worl(| 


The  Gospel  and  the  New  World 


By  ROBERT  E.  SPEER 


The  Stuff  of  Manhood  i^mo,  cloth, 

John's  Gospel,  The  Greatest  Book  in  the  World 

i2mo,  cloth, 

Men  Who  Were  Found  Faithful 

i2mo,  cloth. 

Some  Great  Leaders  in  the  World  Movement 

The  Cole  Lectures  for  1911.       izmo,  cloth, 

The  Foreign  Doctor:    "  The  Hakim  Sahib  " 
A    Biography    of   Joseph    Plumb    Cochran,    M.D.,    of 
Persia.  IlluBtrated,  i2mo,  cloth, 

Christianity  and  the  Nations 
The  Duff  Lectures  for  igio.  8vo,  cloth. 

Missionary  Principles  and  Practice 

8vo,  cloth, 
A  Memorial  of  Alice  Jackson      i2mo,  cloth, 

A  Memorial  of  Horace  Tracy  Pitkin 

i2mo,  cloth, 

A  Memorial  of  a  True  Life 

A  Biography  of  Hugh  McAllister  Beaver  With  Por- 
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Young  Man  Who  Overcame  lamo,  cloth, 

Paul,  the  All-Round  Man  i6mo,  cloth. 

The  Master  of  the  Heart         i2mo,  cloth, 

A  Young  Man's  Questions       i2mo,  cloth. 

The  Principles  of  Jesus      in   Some   Applications   to 
Present  Life.  i6mo, 

Christ  and  Life     The  Practice  of  the  Christian  Life. 
i2mo,  cloth 

Studies  of  the  Man  Paul  i6mo,  cloth, 

Studies  of  "  The  Man  Christ  Jesus  " 

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Remember  Jesus  Christ         And  Other  Talks  About 
Christ  and  the  Christian  Life.  i6mo.  cloth. 

The  Deity  of  Christ  iSmo,  boards. 


The  Gospel  and  the 
New  World 


By    / 

ROBERT  E.  SPEER 

Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  of  ths 

Presbyterian  Church  in  the  United 

States  of  America 


New  York  Chicago 

Fleming    H.    Re  veil    Company 

London       and      Edinburgh 


Copyright,  19 19,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      75    Princes    Street 


Preface 

THE  Gospel  is  the  same  yesterday  and  to-day. 
But  the  world  is  a  different  world.  And  the 
change  which  the  war  has  wrought  in  the 
world  entails  new  problems  with  regard  to  the  statement 
of  the  unchanging  Gospel  and  the  methods  of  its  action 
upon  man  and  his  institutions  and  relationships.  Wherein 
is  the  world  a  different  world?  What  are  the  new  prob- 
lems of  the  missionary  undertaking?  Is  it  necessary  that 
it  should  be  subjected  to  any  radical  reorganization  of 
method  or  aim? 

These  are  questions  which  must  be  frankly  and 
broadly  faced  in  the  new  day  which  is  dawning.  And 
fresh  political  issues  are  coming  clearly  into  view.  The 
principle  of  the  self-determination  of  peoples,  the  tide  of 
democratic  feeling  that  is  rising  in  the  hearts  of  the  na- 
tions, the  new  realization  of  the  importance  of  right 
racial  education  and  the  increasing  need  of  instrumen- 
talities of  just  and  charitable  international  interpretation 
are  setting  the  work  of  foreign  missions  in  a  new  light 
in  the  thought  of  the  world.  Is  it  desirable  or  probable 
that  in  consequence,  the  foreign  mission  work  is  to  be 
modified  in  its  character,  or  is  it  to  be  still  an  unswerving 
and  direct  religious  enterprise  with  wide  and  inevitable 
social  and  political  bearings,  but  with  undiminished  and 
dominating  loyalty  to  its  central  spiritual  ideals  ?  These 
are  some  of  the  questions  which  are  considered  in  this 
volume. 


e  PEEFACB 

It  is  plain  that  the  work  of  foreign  missions  is  one  of 
the  indispensable  forces  in  the  life  and  progress  of  the 
world.  It  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that  that  force 
shall  be  kept  pure  and  true,  that  its  functions  shall  be 
clearly  discerned  and  its  right  field  of  action  be  justly 
recognized  and  that  the  movement  shall  make  its  full 
contribution  to  the  moral  good  of  mankind,  to  the  estab- 
ishment  of  a  new  order  of  righteous  relationships  of  men 
and  of  nations  based  on  the  principles  of  justice  and 
service,  and  to  the  lasting  peace  of  the  world. 

R.  E.  S. 
New  Yorkj 


Contents 

I.  The  Gospel  and  the  New  World         .        .        9 

II.  Foreign  Missions  in  the   Light  and  Dark- 

ness OF  THE  War 44 

III.  Christianity  AND  THE  Race  Problem    .         .65 

IV.  Foreign   Missions  a  Constructive  Inter- 

pretation OF  Christian  Principles    .         .       89 

V.  The  World's   Abiding   Debt  to  the   Mis- 

sionary       121 

VI.  The   Christianizing   of  the  Impact  of  the 

West  Upon  the  East         .         .        .        .138 

VII.  The  Evangelization  of  the  World  in  This 

Generation M4 

VIII.  The  Relationship  of  Missionary  Education 

TO  Evangelism i?^ 

IX.  The    Purpose    and   Problems  of    Medical 

Missionary  Work 186 

X.  The     Relation    of    Western    Theological 

Statements  and  Forms  of  Religious  Ex- 
perience TO  Other  Races  .        .        .203 

XI.  Are  a  Restatement  of  the  Christian  Mes- 

sage TO  THE  Non-Christian  Peoples  and  a 
Reinterpretation  of  the  Missionary  Ob- 
jective for  the  Church  at  Home  Neces- 
sary?          225 

XII.  Ideals  OF  Missionary  Service      .        .        .     250 

XIII.  Missionary  Organization  and  Life      .        .     260 

XIV.  New  Aspects  of  the  Relations  of  East  and 

West 274 

XV.  The  Church  and  the  World  To-Day  .        .     302 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

THE  Gospel  is  the  same  yesterday  and  to-day. 
But  the  world  is  a  different  world.  Wherein  is 
it  different  ?  In  one  sense  it  is  in  an  immensely 
larger  world.  We  go  all  aro.und  the  world  more  easily 
than  our  great-grandfathers  could  go  from  New  York  to 
the  Mississippi  River  and  we  know  more  of  what  goes  on 
in  China  than  our  fathers  knew  of  Cuba.  Each  of  us 
is  consciously  a  part  of  a  world  so  big  and  intricate  that 
our  fathers  v/ould  have  disbelieved  any  one  who  would 
have  foretold  to  them  the  commonplace  facts  of  to-day. 
But  this  expansion  of  the  world  is  in  reality  its  contrac- 
tion. The  whole  of  it  has  become  smaller  than  its  parts. 
Some  years  ago  I  came  up  the  west  coast  of  South 
America  from  Callao  with  a  Peruvian  official  who  was 
on  his  way  to  take  up  office  as  prefect  of  Iquitos,  the 
great  rubber  port  of  Peru  on  the  upper  Amazon.  The 
significant  thing  was  his  choice  of  the  quickest  route 
from  Lima  to  his  post.  Overland  the  distance  in  a 
straight  line  was  perhaps  six  hundred  miles.  In  time, 
however,  it  was  quicker  to  go  nearly  half-way  around  the 
world,  from  Callao  to  Panama,  from  Panama  to  New 
York,  from  New  York  to  Liverpool,  from  Liverpool  back 
across  the  Atlantic  and  up  the  Amazon.  This  was  be- 
fore the  war.  The  war  shrank  the  world  into  yet  smaller 
dimensions.  I  went  out  to  Siam  in  the  spring  of  1915 
about  ten  months  after  the  war  had  begun.     In  Honolulu 

9 


10       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  XEW  WOELD 

and  Manila  lay  the  rows  of  interned  German  boats.  At 
Hongkong  the  shutters  were  up  on  the  shops  and  the 
banks  of  all  the  German  firms.  The  leading  restaurant 
of  Hongkong  had  a  new  gilt  sign  across  the  door. 
"  Weisman  "  had  been  replaced  by  "  Wiseman."  In  the 
Menam  below  Bangkok  for  a  mile  up  and  down  the 
river  lay  a  long  line  of  German  steamers.  Far  up  in  the 
jungle  we  came  on  some  German  engineers  building  a 
railroad  bridge  and  carrying  the  road  on  into  the  jungle 
but  hampered  at  every  turn  by  their  inability  to  get  out 
new  material.  Wherever  one  stopped  anywhere  on  land 
or  sea,  there  the  life  of  the  world  was  trembling  in  unison 
with  what  was  happening  ten  thousand  miles  away.  Iso- 
lation has  disappeared.  The  new  world  is  tightly  inter- 
laced by  boat  and  wire  and  rail  into  a  physical  unity. 

The  economic  unity  of  the  new  world,  as  there  will  be 
occasion  to  point  out  again,  is  a  yet  more  pervasive  and 
unalterable  fact.  The  world  was  aware  of  the  fact  be- 
fore the  war  but  it  miscalculated  both  its  strength  and 
its  weakness.  It  believed  that  the  financial  interdepend- 
ence of  the  nations,  "  the  peace  of  Dives,"  as  Mr.  Kip- 
ling described  it,  would  hold  the  nations  together.  It 
was  an  empty  faith.  Not  even  certain  financial  ruin  can 
prevent  war,  and  it  ought  not  to.  On  the  other  hand  men 
had  no  conception  of  the  indissolubleness  of  the  com- 
mercial solidarity  of  mankind.  They  did  not  realize  that 
the  economic  life  of  the  world  had  become  an  organic 
unity  and  that  if  any  nation  should  fall  all  must  feel  the 
downpull.  Even  yet  many  men  will  not  believe  it.  They 
talk  in  the  old  language  of  "  trade  war,"  as  though  the 
ancient  Shibboleths  were  any  longer  true.  Trade  war 
is  trade  suicide  in  a  unified  world.  The  nation  that  in- 
jures other  nations  in  trade  conflict  simply  injures  itself. 
If  a  man  gashes  his  leg  with  his  hand,  the  hand  shares 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  KBW  WOELD       11 

in  the  loss  and  suffering.  And  it  is  so  in  humanity.  In 
the  development  and  distribution  of  raw  material,  in  the 
interchange  of  goods,  in  the  use  of  credits,  the  interest  of 
one  is  the  interest  of  all  and  the  interest  of  all  is  the  in- 
terest of  each.  Any  other  doctrine  and  the  practice  of  it 
will  bring  their  own  judgment  with  them.  The  male- 
factors who  are  immediately  guilty  may  figure  up  only 
profit  but  time  and  facts  will  reckon  with  their  children. 
The  truth  is  the  only  profitable  economic  theory  and  the 
truth  is  that  the  economic  interest  of  humanity  is  in- 
divisible. The  war  which  was  the  greatest  economic 
schism  ever  known  has  demonstrated  this  principle  of 
unity. 

And  the  new  world  presents  the  phenomena  not  of 
physical  and  economic  unity  alone  but  also  of  a  common 
political  and  intellectual  life.  Eight  years  ago  Professor 
Reinsch  wrote  a  thoughtful  book  on  "  Intellectual  and 
Political  Currents  in  the  Far  East "  in  which  he  con- 
tended, against  the  fallacy  of  perpetual  racial  disunion, 
that  "  the  separate  existence  of  East  and  West  has  come 
to  an  end  and  that,  in  profoundly  influencing  each  other, 
they  will  both  contribute  their  share  in  developing  the 
all-human  civilization  of  the  future."  Professor  Reinsch 
proceeded  to  describe  the  movements  of  thought  in  Asia 
which  were  either  analogous  to  or  identical  with  the  main 
movements  of  opinion  in  the  Western  world.  The  old 
generalization  that  Asia  is  autocratic  and  satisfied  with 
autocracy  and  that  the  West  is  democratic  is  not  true. 
The  greatest  war  in  history  has  been  fought  between 
autocracy  and  democracy  in  the  West  and  the  ferment 
of  ideas  which  lay  back  of  the  war  and  which  inspired 
the  winning  forces  has  spread  to  the  whole  earth.  The 
principle  of  the  "  self-determination  of  peoples,"  so  easily 
expressed  and  so  hard  to  define  and  limit  and  apply,  has 


12       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

set  the  hearts  of  whole  races  and  of  wide  buried  strata  of 
men  aflame  with  new  hopes  and  desires.  The  war  has 
universalized  the  familiar  catch  words  of  democracy  and 
equality  and  justice.  I  wrote  some  time  before  the  war 
ended  to  some  of  the  leading  men  of  Asia  to  ask  what 
effect  the  war  was  having  on  moral  and  religious  ideas 
and  these  were  some  of  their  answers : 

"  All  other  religions  in  Asia  must  try  to  do  something 
better  for  brotherhood." 

"  War  proves  that  might  is  not  right  but  right  itself 
always  remains  right." 

"  War  reveals  the  real  meaning  of  the  Christian  term 
*  righteousness/  and  its  relationship  with  sacrifice." 

"  The  real  issues  involved  in  the  war  are  the  issues  of 
humanity  and  democracy." 

"  The  war  revealed  that  the  reconstruction  work  should 
be  based  upon  the  principles  of  universal  brotherhood 
and  fraternity,  and  a  world-wide  scale  of  reconstruction 
is  desirable." 

"  The  maintenance  of  permanent  peace  and  the  further- 
ance of  the  welfare  of  nations  require  largely  the  in- 
fluence of  religion  as  the  supplier  of  ennobling,  unifying 
elements  of  life,  and  purifier  of  all  human  motives. 

"  During  the  war,  while  the  struggles  of  the  two  op- 
posing factors  were  at  the  climax,  and  the  world  ap- 
parently doubted  the  probable  issue  of  the  cause  of  justice 
and  humanity  in  the  face  of  the  deadly  assaults  of  op- 
pressive militarism,  the  inmost  desires  of  the  noblest 
minds  found  expression  in  their  prayers,  their  opinions 
and  their  deeds ;  they  were  forgetful  of  their  own  selves, 
solely  expectant  for  the  purification  of  the  whole  world 
through  the  furnace  of  the  hardest  trials  and  the  bitterest 
sorrows ;  they  sought  for  the  reign  of  peace  restored  and 
justice  exercised,  or  further — for  that  of  permanent  peace 
and  inviolable  justice,  the  foundations  of  which  were 
undoubtedly    being    laid   even    when    the    international 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       13 

struggles  were  at  their  height.  It  may  be  surmised  that  all 
this  was  an  unmistakable  sign  of  the  influence  of  true 
religion,  and  it  is  to  be  expected  after  the  war  that  there 
will  be  found  an  ever  widening  circle  of  the  people  whose 
inmost  desires  are  for  the  realizaton  of  universal  brother- 
hood and  the  cessation  of  every  kind  of  self-centered  hos- 
tility among  nations." 

And  the  effect  of  the  war  on  political  ideas  cannot  be 
better  shown  than  in  the  impressions  with  which  a  Jap- 
anese General  returned  to  Japan  after  a  year  in  the  army 
camps  in  America  and  with  the  armies  in  France.  These 
were  the  convictions  which  he  took  back  with  him : 

1.  A  firm  faith  in  democracy  and  a  conviction  that 
democracy,  perhaps  after  the  British  rather  than  the 
American  model,  because  Japan  is  a  monarchy,  must  be 
accepted  in  Japan. 

2.  A  surprised  discovery  of  the  strength  of  religious 
faith  in  France. 

3.  A  clear  conviction  of  God  in  history.  History  is 
not  a  development  of  impersonal  force  nor  did  commercial 
or  random  influence  bring  America  in.    It  was  God. 

4.  Germany  was  defeated  in  the  spirit.  She  was  not 
as  yet  beaten  materially.  It  was  the  moral  ideals  of  the 
Allies  which  conquered  the  moral  ideals  of  Germany. 

5.  America  did  not  have  so  large  an  actual  part  in 
the  conflict  as  others,  but  it  was  America  which  deter- 
mined the  victory.  The  scale  was  even  with  the  German 
side  preponderating;  when  America  was  forced  in,  the 
German  side  of  the  scale  shot  up.  America's  contribu- 
tion was  decisive. 

6.  In  outward  appearance  Russia's  failure  was  a  dark 
disaster.  It  prolonged  the  war  and  threatened  the  de- 
feat of  the  Allies,  but  in  the  deeper  philosophy  of  history 
the  hand  of  God  is  clear.     It  meant  the  overthrow  of 


14       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

autocracy  in  Russia,  and  in  Germany,  and  assured  a  tiqw, 
democratic  age. 

7.  Spiritual  faith  throughout  the  world,  faith  in  God 
and  in  spiritual  force  and  ideals,  have  been  advanced  by 
the  experience  of  the  war. 

8.  Belief  in  the  Trinity  has  not  been  destroyed.  The 
divine  character  and  personality  and  teaching  of  Jesus 
have  been  brought  out  with  greater  clearness  than  ever. 

The  new  world  is  a  world  in  which  the  old  problems  of 
England  and  the  United  States  have  become  the  prob- 
lems of  all  nations  intensified  in  many  lands  by  the  fact 
that  experience  must  be  condensed  in  old  and  slow  na- 
tions which  new  and  active  nations  were  able  to  spread 
out  over  longer  periods,  that  immense  and  in  large  part 
illiterate  populations  are  involved,  and  that  the  moral 
and  spiritual  forces  which  alone  saved  the  West  are 
pitifully  inadequate  in  these  nations. 

But  let  there  be  no  supposition  that  the  new  world  is 
unequally  new.  The  fact  is  that  the  processes  of  change 
are  as  plain  and  powerful  in  the  West  as  in  the  East. 
The  unity  of  the  world  is  seen  in  the  unity  of  its  ex- 
perience. Old  things  are  passed  away  everywhere.  The 
old  Europe  is  gone,  and  a  new  Europe  is  come  with  new 
maps,  new  national  and  racial  divisions,  new  economic 
problems  and  relationships  and  discontents,  new  political 
principles  and  fallacies,  new  ambitions  and  enmities  and 
fears,  new  social  ideals,  new  disabilities,  new  hopes,  new 
despairs.  The  old  Africa  is  gone.  Unless  they  are  some 
day  restored  to  her,  as  it  is  to  be  hoped  they  may  be, 
Germany's  African  colonies  are  lost  and  the  continent  is 
practically  divided  between  Great  Britain  and  France. 
Will  this  be  best  for  Africa  and  the  black  race  ?  The  fu- 
ture will  declare.  Is  Africa  to  be  administered  for  the 
negro  or  for  the  white  ?    Who  is  to  have  the  best  land  and 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD        15 

to  be  enriched  by  African  wealth  ?    Africa  will  test  the 
great  propositions  for  which  millions  of  men  laid  down 
their  lives  in  the  war.    South  America  was  the  continent 
least  involved  in  the  great  war.    Some  of  the  republics  did 
all  that  they  could  on  the  side  of  the  Allies,  but  it  was  as 
nothing  in  comparison,  for  example,  with  what  the  Punjab 
alone  did  in  India  with  its  offering  of  a  million  men.    But 
whatever  its  direct  relation  to  the  struggle,  whether  little 
or  great,  the  struggle  altered  all  Latin- American  destiny. 
The  immense  German  influence  in  South  America  broke 
down.     The   close  alliance  of  the   United   States   with 
France,  Latin  America's  ideal,  and  the  restraint  of  the 
United  States  in  Mexico  and  the  unselfish  sacrifice  of  the 
United  States  in  behalf  of  great  political  ideals,  went  far 
to  convince  Latin  America,  in  spite  of  much  that  still 
offends,   that  we  are  not  wholly  given  to  materialism 
and  gain.    Not  for  half  a  century  have  North  and  South 
America  been  as  ready  to  work  out  a  common  destiny  as 
to-day.    Not  least  has  the  war  altered  the  whole  life  and 
outlook  of  Asia.    In  innumerable  ways  Asia  has  felt  the 
effect  of  the  war.    One  of  the  most  powerful  and  least 
calculable   is   the   influence   which    their  experience   in 
Europe  and  other  war  areas  will  have  had  upon  the 
millions  of  soldiers  and  labourers  from  India,  Africa  and 
China.     "The  Chinese  are  seeing  a   sad   side  of  our 
Western  civilization,"  writes  one  of  the  men  who  has  been 
working  among  the  coolie  labour  battalions  in  France. 
"  I  sometimes  wonder  what  outstanding  impressions  they 
will  carry  back  with  them  to  China.    Coolies  they  are,  it 
is  true,  but  theirs  is  a  simple  philosophy  of  life  inter- 
spersed with  an  abundance  of  common  sense.    When  they 
get  back  to  China,  what  tales  will  they  tell  in  their  homes 
and  to  their  friends  gathered  in  the  tea-houses?    Coolies 
though  they  be,  not  one  but  will  have  a  larger  hearing 


16       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

than  many  foreigners  have  ever  secured.  It  vi^ould  not 
surprise  me  to  hear  of  officials  in  the  districts  from 
which  these  men  come  calHng  in  these  plain  men  to  hear 
from  their  own  lips  the  ungarnished  tales  of  life  as  they 
had  had  to  live  it  over  here.  They  will  hear  what  these 
men  are  doing  and  seeing  and  thinking  now.  France  is 
now  a  great  school  for  Chinese.  The  greatest  hospital 
for  Chinese  in  the  world  is  here  and  number  1,500  pa- 
tients. The  greatest  school  for  Chinese  in  the  world  is 
also  here  in  France.  There  are  140,000  pupils.  Our 
graduates  will  scatter  to  all  parts  of  China.  Their  ex- 
perience in  France  no  doubt  will  be  the  biggest  thing  in 
their  lives  and  a  thing  in  which  all  the  Chinese  with  whom 
they  come  into  contact  will  be  interested.  We  must 
therefore  reckon  on  a  new  body  of  men  140,000  strong 
going  back  to  China  as  interpreters  of  our  Western  civili- 
zation. What  will  they  say  ?  '*  And  what  are  the  Indian 
troops  saying  as  they  go  back  to  their  home  villages? 
Not  by  any  means  such  things  as  Mr.  Kipling  writes 
down  in  "  The  Eyes  of  Asia." 

And  the  new  world  has  meant  a  greater  change  for  us 
than  for  any  other  nation  except  the  three  ruined  powers 
and  Russia.  It  has  revealed  us  to  ourselves  both  in  our 
strength  and  in  our  weakness.  We  have  discovered  ca- 
pacities for  united  and  unselfish  action  which  we  had 
distrusted  or  disbelieved.  And  we  have  realized  that  a 
democracy  can  develop  many  despotic  tendencies  and  that 
its  loose  and  generous  liberties  are  exposed  to  peculiar 
dangers.  The  unity  of  our  national  life  in  war  has  been 
followed  by  the  widest  dissensions  in  the  policies  of 
peace.  New  powers  of  common  action  have  been 
matched  by  new  capacities  of  disagreement.  The  heavy 
expenditures  of  the  war  were  so  much  less  that  those  of 
.others  and  the  growth  of  national  wealth  has  been  so 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       17 

great  that  we  emerge  from  the  war  with  economic  re- 
sources far  in  excess  of  those  of  other  nations  and  with 
the  undisputed  financial  leadership  of  the  world  in  our 
hands.  Furthermore  we  have  sought  nothing  for  our- 
selves in  recompense  for  our  share  in  the  struggle,  neither 
territory,  nor  indemnity,  nor  repayment  of  any  sort  what- 
soever. We  have  made  ourselves  unpopular  by  objecting 
to  the  acquisitions  of  other  nations,  but  we  have  gained 
the  trust  of  the  peoples  who  want  help  and  who  believe 
that  America  would  give  it  to  them  disinterestedly. 
There  may  be  many  criticisms  of  the  peace  treaty  be- 
cause of  injustices  which  it  allows  but  in  not  one  case 
does  America  profit  by  these  injustices.  Indeed  the  criti- 
cism which  had  to  be  met  was  that  the  treaty  did  nothing 
but  lay  on  America  additional  obligations  and  obligations 
for  evil  situations  which  it  had  not  created  and  which  lay 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  its  traditional  responsibilities. 
With  new  power,  fresh  influence  and  clean  hands  the 
United  States  came  out  of  the  war.  No  other  people 
knows  better  than  we  our  weaknesses  and  shortcomings 
but  we  know  too  our  honest  good  purpose  toward  all 
other  nations,  our  desire  to  live  at  peace  with  all,  to  take 
advantage  of  none,  and  to  see  all  nations  prosperous  and 
free.  "  America,"  as  John  Galsworthy  said  on  his  visit 
to  the  United  States  in  the  spring  of  1919,  "has  the 
might  of  a  great  country  and  a  great  people  behind 
her.  With  her  powers  she  can  accomplish  wonders 
for  the  benefit  of  the  world.  But  she  must  look  to 
the  use  she  makes  of  her  might.  Whatever  she  does 
is  watched  with  careful  eyes  by  England,  for  what- 
ever America  does  affects  England.  America's  ac- 
tions vitally  affect  England,  not  so  much  in  a  mate- 
rial way  as  a  spiritual  way.  To  America  the  whole 
world  looks.     Her  dauntless  spirit,  her  desire  for  the 


18       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

best  things,  the  force  of  her  inhabitants  are  capable  of 
being  of  the  greatest  service  to  the  rest  of  the  world. 
America  is  on  the  threshold  of  her  career.  She  may  step 
out  as  the  redeemer  of  the  world.  It  is  her  duty  to  do  so. 
Noblesse  oblige  is  as  much  an  obligation  of  democracy 
as  of  aristocracy,  and  at  present  rests  peculiarly  on  the 
United  States.  Her  good  work  will  be  done,  however,  in 
the  schools  and  homes  rather  than  in  Congress.  If 
America  walks  upright,  we  too  shall  walk  upright.  If 
America  bows  to  money  and  wealth,  we  too  shall  bow 
and  civilization  will  be  lost." 

What  is  the  business  of  the  Gospel  in  this  new  world? 
What  does  the  world  need  ?  Who  will  show  it  its  course  ? 
He  is  a  rash  man  who  thinks  that  these  are  easy  questions. 

Only  one  blind  to-day  can  feel  that  he  sees  surely  and 
only  a  man  who  is  unaware  that  he  is  a  neighbour  to  his 
fellow  men  can  be  at  rest  in  a  world  like  ours.  And  yet 
there  is  one  view  in  which  confusion  and  the  perplexity 
of  the  time  are  not  to  be  dreaded.  They  are  evidence 
of  freedom  and  of  the  forward  striving  of  men.  Far 
better  the  confusion  of  liberty  than  any  coerced  simplicity. 

And  we  have  the  consolation  in  the  midst  of  this  con- 
fusion that  after  all  in  any  day  the  problem  of  the  in- 
dividual can  become  a  measurably  clear  and  simple  prob- 
lem. He  knows  his  Lord,  Jesus  Christ.  No  tumult  of 
the  world  around  him  can  ever  hide  from  him  the  voice 
of  that  Lord  within  his  heart.  He  loves  his  neighbour 
and  no  perplexity  as  to  social  duty  can  ever  confuse  him 
as  to  what  that  love  of  his  neighbour  requires  of  him  in 
the  actual  intercourse  of  life  and  the  common  round  of 
daily  companionships.  And  yet  it  is  possible  to  exagger- 
ate these  consolations  that  come  from  our  personal  Chris- 
tian faith.  It  is  quite  true  that  all  that  the  Lord  our  God 
requires  of  us  is  that  we  should  do  justice  and  love  mercy 


THE  GOSPEL  Ai^D  THE  NEW  WOELD       19 

and  walk  humbly  with  our  God.  But  what  justice  is,  is 
by  no  means  a  clear  and  simple  thing  and  no  matter  how 
real  our  personal  Christian  experience  may  be,  just  so 
surely  as  a  man  enters  deeply  into  it  is  he  made  aware  of 
the  kinships  in  which  he  stands  to  every  other  man-— 
those  who  have  already  shared  this  experience  with  him 
and  those  to  whom  this  experience  is  still  strange. 

To  find  duty  to-day,  whether  our  individual  or  our  col- 
lective duty,  is  an  infinitely  difficult  task.  But  there  are 
some  elements  in  the  present  duty  of  the  Christian  Church 
in  our  nation,  that  must  also  be  the  present  duty  of  the 
Christian  Church  throughout  the  world,  that  are  fairly 
clear. 

We  know  that  the  first  great  task  of  the  Christian 
Church,  always  her  primary  and  fundamental  business, 
that  underlies  everything  else  and  without  which  no  other 
part  of  her  work  can  ever  be  done,  is  her  responsibility 
as  a  witness.  The  Church  was  sent  out  into  the  world 
as  a  witness,  a  witness  to  certain  great  facts  and  prin- 
ciples lying  within  and  back  of  those  facts.  That  was 
her  primary  commission.  "  Ye  shall  be  witnesses  unto 
me,"  said  our  Lord,  "  both  in  Jerusalem  and  in  Judea  and 
in  Samaria  and  unto  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth." 
The  essential  qualification  for  the  elemental  Christian 
ministry  was  that  men  and  women  should  be  competent 
to  discharge  this  duty  of  testimony.  The  Church  con- 
ceived its  work  first  of  all  in  these  terms.  When  it  had 
stated  all  the  great  facts  that  had  passed  before  its  eyes, 
then  it  said  emphatically  and  clearly  as  though  that 
closed  the  matter,  "and  we  were  witnesses  of  these 
things."  And  our  first  duty  to-day  would  be  to  make 
clear  to  ourselves  just  what  the  great  facts  are  that  are 
to  constitute  the  permanent  and  abiding  testimony  of  the 
Christian  Church.     For  primarily  it  must  be  a  body  of 


20       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

facts.  Witnesses  are  not  called  to  express  their  opinions. 
Witnesses  are  not  called  to  do  the  work  of  advocates. 
Witnesses  are  called  to  give  testimony  to  the  facts  that 
they  have  seen  and  heard  and  know.  And  yet,  after  all, 
facts  do  not  necessarily  constitute  the  truth.  The  truth 
is  true  facts  seen  in  their  right  relationship  and  given 
their  true  interpretation.  And  our  business,  as  we  under- 
stand it  quite  well  in  the  world  that  we  are  living  in  to- 
day, is  to  bear  witness  to  the  great  principles  of  truth 
which  were  once  embodied  in  historic  facts  and  which 
those  historic  facts  of  the  incarnation  and  the  crucifixion 
and  the  resurrection  and  the  ascension  of  our  Lord  were 
meant  to  bring  home  into  the  conscience  and  mind  and 
heart  of  humanity  forever.  And  I  wish  to  set  forth  what 
seem  to  me  to  be  the  half  dozen  great  elements  of  our 
witness  bearing — our  primary  responsibility  as  Christian 
men  and  women  and  as  a  Christian  Church  in  our  nation 
and  in  the  world  to-day. 

In  presenting  the  abiding  Gospel  to  the  new  world  we 
are  first  of  all  to  bear  witness  to  the  fact  and  the  truth 
that  Almighty  Love  is  at  the  heart  of  all  things.  What 
our  Lord  said  when  He  taught  men  to  say  "  Our  Father," 
and  to  conceive  of  a  father  as  back  of  all  the  universe 
is  our  initial  and  fundamental  testimony.  We  believe  that 
at  the  heart  of  history,  that  in  the  very  heart  of  nature, 
that  at  the  very  center  of  all  life,  is  Almighty  Love.  We 
hold  this  against  every  other  interpretation  of  history 
and  of  nature  and  of  life  and  of  the  universe,  that 
at  the  root  of  all  there  is  found  an  almighty  personal 
love. 

The  second  element  of  our  testimony  is  that  men  need 
and  that  they  can  have  the  help  of  that  Almighty  Love, 
of  a  living  and  sufficient  fatherly  God.  Now  each  of 
these  two  statements  is  denied.    Sometimes  both  of  them 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       21 

are  denied.  Sometimes  men  deny  that  they  have  any 
need  of  such  help.  Sometimes  they  deny  that  any  such 
help  is  obtainable.  Sometimes  they  deny  both.  It  is  our 
testimony  as  Christian  believers  and  as  the  Christian 
Church  that  men  stand  in  need  of  help  from  without  and 
that  help  from  without  is  available  for  their  need.  We 
can  put  it  all  in  great  words,  the  word  of  our  Lord  Him- 
self, "  Apart  from  me  ye  can  do  nothing,"  and  the  word 
of  St.  Paul,  "I  can  do  all  things  through  Christ  who 
strengthens  me."  And  it  is  because  we  believe  those  two 
things  that  we  can  believe  rationally  in  liberty.  A  liberty 
that  does  not  know  its  limitation  or  that  has  no  access 
to  energy  can  be  no  liberty  at  all.  There  is  a  passage  in 
a  recent  book  giving  an  account  of  a  wonderful  evening 
in  Venice  of  Lord  Acton  with  Mary  Gladstone  and  her 
brother  Herbert,  when  Acton  walked  up  and  down  before 
them  and  set  forth  before  them  his  great  and  unquench- 
able belief  in  God's  will  for  freedom  for  mankind.  How 
did  he  come  to  believe  in  freedom  with  that  great  pas- 
sionate eagerness  that  made  him  one  of  the  prophets  of 
liberty  in  the  past  generation  and  century,  except  by  sub- 
mitting himself  to  the  strength  of  a  joyous  faith  in  the 
needed  and  accessible  help  and  life  of  a  living  and  loving 
and  sufficient  God? 

The  third  great  element  of  our  testimony  to-day  is  that 
men  are  just  man.  We  cannot  apprehend  the  Gospel  ex- 
cept in  the  implication  of  human  unity.  Whatever  vital- 
ity heresy  can  have  dies  in  the  experience  of  unity.  A 
heresy  can  live  only  in  a  Gospel  which  believes  and  prac- 
tices the  divisibility  of  mankind.  We  go  right  back  to  the 
beginning  and  everything  rests  upon  the  implication  and 
faith  of  the  true  unity  of  man.  And  one  finds  there  to- 
day whatever  argument  there  is,  and  whatever  suggestion 
as  a  form  we  need,  with  regard  to  the  unity  of  the  Chris- 


22       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

tian  Church.  Whatever  disunity  in  the  Christian  Church 
compromises  or  weakens  her  testimony  to  the  unity  of 
humanity  is  unallowable.  Whatever  diversity  of  the 
Christian  Church  enriches  and  does  not  destroy  her  testi- 
mony to  human  unity  is  not  only  allowable  but  desirable. 
And  we  see  the  forces  by  which  alone  the  early  traditions 
of  unity  can  be  recovered  and  borne  out  in  our  witness 
to  mankind.  One  recalls  a  letter  which  Cardinal  New- 
man wrote  in  the  mellow  days  that  came  at  the  end  of 
his  distraught  life  to  Principal  Brown  of  Aberdeen  be- 
tween whom  and  himself  there  was  a  sympathetic  bond 
in  their  deep  desire  for  the  unity  of  the  body  of  Christ. 
"  It  seems  to  me/'  said  Cardinal  Newman,  "  the  first  step 
to  any  chance  of  unity  amid  our  divisions  is  for  religious 
minds,  one  and  all,  to  live  upon  the  Gospels."  Nobody 
can  live  in  the  Gospels  without  realizing  that  the  funda- 
mental message  of  Christianity  must  be  a  united  message 
of  a  united  humanity. 

The  fourth  needed  element  of  our  human  testimony 
to-day  is  that  righteousness  is  a  universal  law.  We  have 
fought  a  great  war  and  ten  million  men  have  laid  down 
their  lives  to  demonstrate  to  mankind  forever  that  right- 
eousness is  to  be  applied  to  the  whole  of  human  life,  to 
the  relations  of  man  to  man,  of  nation  to  nation,  of  all 
the  different  elements  of  human  society,  that  righteous- 
ness cannot  be  departmentalized,  that  it  is  simply  the 
effort  to  carry  the  truth,  and  truth  that  carries  its  own 
bitter  judgment  upon  all  that  is  inconsistent  with  it,  into 
all  the  relationships  and  activities  and  ideals  and  experi- 
ences of  every  form  of  human  life. 

The  fifth  great  element  of  the  Church's  testimony  to- 
day is  an  abiding  witness  to  the  primary  principle  that  our 
Lord  laid  down  in  His  own  life  and  work,  "  I  am  in  the 
midst  of  you  as  one  who  serves.     Among  the  Gentiles 


THE  GOSPEL  AKD  THE  NEW  WOELD       23 

those  who  rule  shall  be  counted  great  but  it  shall  not  be 
so  among  you.     For  the  Son  of  ]\Ian  came  not  to  be 
ministered  unto  but  to  minister  and  to  give  his  life  a 
ransom  for  many."    This  war  has  been,  in  our  American 
thought,  a  struggle  between  these  conflicting  ideals,  the 
ideal  of  service  and  the  ideal  of  assertion,  the  ideal  of 
renunciation  and  the  ideal  of  aggrandizement.    The  whole 
history  of  mankind  has  been  written  in  the  confused  strug- 
gle between  those  terms.    We  have  come  to  realize  that  the 
victory  is  going  to  lie  with  the  elements  of  renunciation, 
that  even  in  a  harsh  and  bitter  world  like  this  the  crown 
and  the  power  and  the  victory  belong  to  the  ministry  of 
unselfishness.     We  have  seen  one  notable  illustration  of 
it  in  what  we  have  just  passed  through  in  our  national 
experience.    It  has  been  a  problem  in  America  for  many 
years  as  to  what  would  be  the  effect  of  the  feminizing  of 
American  life  through  the  education  of  the  American 
citizenship  at  the  hands  of  women;  and  we  know  how 
often  we  have  heard  in  the  last  score  of  years  of  the 
penalty  that  lay  ahead  of  America  for  placing  the  dis- 
cipline of  children  not  only  in  the  homes  but  in  the 
public  schools  in  the  hands  of  women.     What  has  been 
the  result?    The  millions  of  young  men  who  have  been 
taught  by  women,  the  women  who  have  lived  their  lives 
in  the  principle  of  renunciation  and  service,  were  found 
to  have  proved  themselves  to  be  equal  in  the  day  of  test- 
ing to  any  call  laid  upon  them.    This  is  the  principle  for 
which  Mr.  Kidd  has  been  arguing  in  the  last  of  his  books, 
that  the  future  of  the  world  is  in  the  hands  of  the  na- 
tions that  yield  themselves  most  completely  to  the  mould- 
ing of  the  spirit  of  renunciation  and  service  and  sacrifice 
that  has  always  been  the  primary  principle  in  the  life  of 
womankind,  which  was  the  elemental  principle  in  Chris- 
tianity in  the  beginning. 


24       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

The  last  element  in  our  witness  bearing  to-day  is  our 
testimony  to  a  deathless  and  impregnable  hope  of  a  new; 
and  different  world.  We  are  coming  at  last  to  the  time 
when  boldly,  without  apology,  without  hesitation,  we  are 
to  stand  out  with  a  full  Christian  message  to  mankind 
and  to  say  to  mankind  that  the  future  of  the  world  is  not 
to  be  surrendered  to  man's  self-chosen  moral  impotence, 
but  the  day  has  come  when  man  is  responsible  for  his 
refusal  of  the  promise  and  offer  of  God  to  release  to  the 
faith  of  men  the  forces  of  that  religion  which,  by  the 
might  of  a  Living  Christ  and  the  power  of  His  Resurrec- 
tion, can  change  the  world.  We  are  hearing  and  are  re- 
joicing to  hear  new  voices  on  this  matter  speaking  in  our 
own  time.  Mr.  Kidd's  "  Science  of  Power  "  to  which  I 
have  referred  and  which  will  be  supplying  soon  as  much 
sermon  material  as  the  author's  earlier  books,  "  Social 
Evolution "  and  "  The  Principles  of  Western  Civiliza- 
tion," is  an  illustration  of  the  new  mind :  "  So  far  from 
civilization  being  practically  unchangeable  or  changeable 
only  through  influences  operating  slowly  over  long  periods 
of  time,  the  world  can  be  changed  in  a  brief  space  of  time. 
In  the  lapse  of  a  single  generation  it  can  undergo 
changes  so  profound,  so  revolutionary,  so  permanent,  that 
it  would  almost  appear  that  human  nature  itself  had  been 
completely  altered  in  the  Interval.  .  .  .  There  is  not 
a  single  existing  institution  in  the  world  of  civilized  hu- 
manity which  cannot  be  profoundly  modified  or  altered 
or  abolished  in  a  generation.  There  is  no  form  of  or- 
ganization, of  government,  or  of  other  domination  of 
forces  that  cannot  be  removed  from  the  world  within  a 
generation.  There  is  no  ideal  in  conformity  with  the 
principles  of  civilization  dreamed  of  or  idealized,  that 
cannot  be  realized  within  the  lifetime  of  those  around 
him.     .     .     ."    Yes,  but  not  by  its  own  boot  straps ! 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD       25 

Within  a  period  of  one  generation  we  have  seen  a 
miracle  wrought.  Thirty  years  ago  was  there  one  who 
believed  that  in  our  generation  we  should  see  the  saloon 
abolished  in  the  American  nation  ?  There  are  many  of  us 
now  who  are  sure  that  we  will  live  to  see  other  institu- 
tions of  lust  and  evil  and  sin  absolutely  extirpated  from 
American  life.  But  what  we  are  being  told  to-day  is 
just  what  Christians  have  known  from  the  very  be- 
ginning, that  any  generation  might  have  the  Kingdom  of 
God  if  it  would  open  itself  to  the  full  inpouring  of  the 
will  and  the  power  of  God. 

I  repeat  that  the  sixth  great  element  of  the  Church's 
testimony  to-day,  in  a  time  that  is  in  danger  of  becoming 
cynical  and  blase  again  and  trampling  on  the  very  ideals 
that  gave  life  and  victory  during  the  great  war,  the  sixth 
is  the  assertion  of  the  possibility  here  and  now  of  a  new 
and  a  better  world,  the  kind  of  world  for  which  Christ 
lived  and  died  and  lives  again.  And  we  must  be  un- 
flinching too,  if  we  are  to  gather  men  to  share  this  faith. 
We  must  be  unflinching  in  describing  what  that  world  is 
going  to  be,  for  men  are  going  to  make  sacrifices  for  it 
just  in  proportion  as  they  believe  it  to  be  a  desirable 
goal.  It  will  be  a  new  world  in  which  the  principle  of 
competition  shall  have  given  way  to  the  principle  of  asso- 
ciation and  fellowship.  It  will  be  a  new  world  in  which 
the  principle  of  unity  shall  have  replaced  the  principle  of 
division,  or  in  which  at  least  the  principle  of  division  will 
see  itself  only  as  the  servant  of  the  principle  of  a  larger 
synthesis.  It  will  be  a  new  world  in  which  the  sacred- 
ness  of  property  will  find  its  sanction  only  in  the  greater 
sanctity  and  dignities  of  personality  and  human  life.  It 
will  be  a  new  world  in  which  the  social  and  individual 
ideals  and  services  will  be  reciprocal  and  complementary. 
It  will  be  a  new  world  in  which  brotherliness  and  friend- 


26       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

ship  will  have  displaced  all  antagonisms  except  the  war 
against  evil.  It  will  be  a  new  world  in  which  obedience 
to  truth  and  duty  will  find  its  ground  in  the  Will  of  a 
transcendent,  sovereign  God.  It  will  be  a  new  world  in 
which  Jesus  Christ  will  be  the  head  of  humanity  and  His 
life  and  spirit  will  do  for  men  what  no  injunctions  or 
ordinances  can  ever  avail  to  do.  That  new  world,  held 
before  men's  eyes,  will  be  worth  as  many  sacrifices  as 
men  were  willing  to  make  for  what  was  held  before  their 
eyes  in  the  four  years  that  have  gone  by.  And  if  only 
that  amount  of  sacrifice  could  be  called  out,  those  ten 
million  lives  and  uncounted  billions  of  wealth,  it  would 
suffice  to  change  the  face  of  the  whole  world  in  less  than 
twenty-five  years. 

Our  question  of  duty  to-day  is  made  simpler  to  such 
honest  minded  men  and  women  as  we  want  to  be  as  we 
review  in  our  minds  and  hearts,  in  this  way,  what  that 
body  of  testimony  is  to  which  it  is  our  first  function  to 
bear  witness  before  the  world.  This  duty  of  witness  to 
Christian  truth,  however,  contains  a  great  deal  more  than 
appears  on  the  surface.  For  this  truth  to  which  the 
Christian  Church  is  to  bear  witness  in  the  world  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  body  of  historic  fact  or  philosophic 
theory.  It  is  a  living  power  and  the  Church  that  bears 
witness  to  the  truth,  in  bearing  such  witness  will  find  that 
it  has  become  not  merely  a  witness  to  facts  but  a  channel 
of  great  and  living  energy  beating  upon  the  life  of  the 
world.  The  word  is  a  word  of  life.  That  was  part  of 
the  commission  of  the  early  Christians  too.  John  the 
Baptist  was  not  a  shining  light  alone  but  a  burning  light 
as  well.  And  what  made  the  testimony  of  the  apostolic 
church  so  wholly  convincing  was  the  life  that  the  Church 
lived  in  the  world  and  the  channel  of  energy  which  was 
opened  through  it  by  the  power  of  God  to  press  those 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       27 

facts  down  upon  the  sin  and  need  of  mankind.  And  our 
business  to-day,  also,  bearing  witness  to  truth  is  to  release 
on  man  the  divine  power  of  renewal  and  redemption  that 
will  affect  every  area  and  department  of  human  life,  the 
life  of  each  man  in  his  ideals  of  what  a  man  can  be  and 
do  in  the  world,  the  relations  of  man  in  society,  all  the 
relations  of  class  to  class  and  of  nation  to  nation.  And 
that  is  a  vastly  more  difficult  problem  than  bearing  wit- 
ness to  static  truth  alone.  To  deal  with  life,  the  great 
complex  life  of  the  world,  tangled  up  by  the  lies  and 
confusions  of  the  past,  scarred  by  the  sin  and  the  evil 
and  hatred  of  the  years  gone  by,  to  disentangle  all  that, 
to  heal  those  scars,  to  make  human  life  to-day  what  the 
will  of  Christ  would  have  that  life  be,  is  a  vastly  more 
difficult  task  than  to  write  down  a  message  and  state  that 
message  in  words  to  men. 

It  is  quite  true  that  obedience  to  truth  and  the  spirit 
of  love  and  brotherliness  is  itself  a  great  work.  Every 
lover  is  a  recreator  of  human  life.  But  this  we  know 
is  not  enough  in  itself.  It  must  lead  on  to  the  duty  of  the 
Christian  Church  not  only  to  bear  a  clear,  pure  and  un- 
equivocal testimony  to  the  body  of  her  witness  in  the 
world  to-day,  not  only  to  be  a  channel  of  living  power 
letting  that  truth  in  upon  mankind,  but  in  herself  to 
devise  and  to  provide  for  mankind  the  great  instru- 
mentalities that  are  necessary  in  order  that  we  may  deal 
w^ith  our  pressing  collective  responsibilities.  One  cannot 
speak  here  of  any  new  agencies  or  methods  of  action 
which  the  Church  must  devise  for  dealing  with  her 
economic  problems  but  I  suggest  the  reading  of  Mr.  John 
Lietch's  little  book  "  Man  to  Man,"— it  is  not  a  book  that 
deals  with  religion  or  that  professes  to  approach  the 
industrial  problem  from  the  view-point  of  religion, — but 
it  is  a  religious  book,  opening  the  way  for  the  application 


28       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

of  the  principles  of  Christian  democratic  relationship  to 
the  problems  of  our  present  industrial  life. 

But  we  must  speak  of  the  other  two  great  problems, 
the  problem  of  our  developing  as  we  have  not  yet  de- 
veloped it,  the  instrumentality  essential  for  correlating 
the  energies  and  agencies  of  the  Christian  Church  in 
their  attack  upon  their  one  common  task.  If  humanity 
is  one,  if  there  is  one  God  and  Father  over  us  all,  if  we 
have  one  Lord  and  one  faith,  we  may  be  sure  that  we 
have  just  one  great  common  work  in  this  world  to-day, 
and  our  present  business  is  to  find  the  instrumentalities 
by  which  we  can  mass  the  whole  power  of  Christian  faith 
and  Christian  character  and  Christian  will  and  bring 
them  to  bear  upon  the  common  problems  in  the  Chris- 
tian nation  and  Christian  Church  to-day.  Christian  men 
are  at  last  truly  striving  to  realize  what  was  in  the  mind 
of  our  Lord  when  He  prayed  that  they  might  all  be  one 
and  in  the  thought  of  Paul  in  those  vast  biological 
metaphors  before  which  we  still  stand  cowed  and  afraid 
not  daring  to  take  them  in  the  fullness  of  their  meaning, 
in  which  Paul  conceived  of  the  Church  as  a  great  living 
body,  articulate,  organic,  with  one  Head  over  all,  from 
Whom  love  and  government  and  power  pour  streaming 
through  it  all.  We  have  begun  in  prayer  and  love,  in 
brotherly  trust,  laying  aside  the  spirit  of  isolation  and 
jealousy  and  suspicion,  submitting  ourselves  to  the  mind 
of  Christ,  to  feel  our  way.  We  shall  not  be  given  light 
to  see  far,  but  we  can  feel  our  way  step  by  step,  as  we 
respond  to  every  intimation  of  Christ's  spirit  with  the 
fullest  possible  measure  of  correlated  activity  in  dealing 
together  with  our  great  common  task.  One  sees  in  the 
immediate  pressing  problem  of  the  Church  to-day  the 
greater  urgency  of  that  task.  Thank  God,  we  have  gone 
far  enough  in  our  duty  in  this  matter  to  furnish  some 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       29 

help  as  mankind  now  seeks  to  shape  the  instrumentalities 
of  a  new  world  organization.  As  in  the  beginning  of  our 
national  life  it  was  the  Christian  Church  pervading  the 
thirteen  original  colonies,  communizing  them,  relating 
them  one  with  one  another,  supplying  models  of  collective 
organization,  that  gave  to  the  statesmen  who  built  the 
political  structure  of  this  nation  their  fundamental  ideals, 
so  it  may  be  to-day.  It  is  the  Christian  Church  that  can 
give  and  in  reality  is  giving  example  and  spirit  for  a  new 
correlated  relationship  for  all  mankind. 

And  what  we  speak  of  to-day  as  the  League  of  Nations 
is  surely  an  indispensable  and  unavoidable  implicate  of 
all  our  Christian  faith  and  endeavour  in  the  world.  Surely 
the  considerations  that  drive  us  on  to  this  great  goal  are 
fundamentally  and  essentially  religious.  We  have  to 
provide  in  our  world  to-day  some  instrumentality  of  in- 
ternational relationships  to  deal  with  the  flat  and  un- 
avoidable facts  of  existing  world  relationships  and 
entanglements.  And  it  is  religious  to  face  facts.  It  is 
irreligious  for  men  to  shut  their  eyes  to  indisputable  and 
unavoidable  facts.  We  are  related  through  the  world 
to-day  by  ties  that  cannot  be  dissolved.  The  economic 
bonds  are  heavy  and  unbreakable.  The  rest  of  the  world 
owes  the  United  States  to-day  more  than  ten  billions  of 
dollars  of  money.  Every  year  the  balance  of  trade  is 
overwhelmingly  in  favour  of  the  United  States.  Not  a 
year  passes  that  obligations  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world  to 
the  United  States  do  not  enlarge.  Men  who  tell  us  that 
we  should  draw  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world  simply 
preach  against  the  irresistible  tides.  We  are  enmeshed  in 
all  the  life  of  the  world  to-day.  We  cannot  unmesh  our- 
selves. Every  day  that  passes  entangles  us  more  in- 
extricably with  all  the  rest  of  mankind  and  we  are  simply 
imbecile  if  in  face  of  the  fact  we  shut  our  eyes  to  it  and 


30       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

do  not  try  to  devise  the  agencies  by  which  that  fact 
should  be  dealt  with. 

In  the  second  place,  we  believe  in  an  attempt  at  a  world 
association  on  religious  grounds,  because  it  is  drawn  out 
from  the  very  fact  and  ideal  of  human  unity.  The 
human  race  has  always  been  one  but  its  unity  was  unreal- 
ized. So  long  as  the  means  of  communication  were  poor 
and  the  population  of  the  world  was  widely  scattered  and 
there  were  great  areas  segregating  the  races,  it  was  pos- 
sible for  us  to  live  our  detached,  provincial  life.  That  day, 
we  have  seen,  has  gone  forever.  God  has  thrown  the 
whole  of  humanity  together  in  an  actual  experience  of  the 
unity  of  man  and  out  of  that  unity  we  are  compelled  to 
think  to-day  the  plans  of  organization  that  shall  deal  with 
this  actual  constitution  of  mankind. 

In  the  third  place  we  are  bound  to  this  advance  by 
loyalty  to  what  has  gone  by.  It  is  irreligious  to  betray 
the  past.  We  remember  the  great  word  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  where  after  that  noble  list  of  heroes  and 
heroines  of  Israel  the  writer  of  the  Epistle  throws  out 
the  moral  challenge  to  the  men  and  women  of  his  own 
day :  "  These  all  received  not  the  promise,  God  having 
provided  some  better  thing  for  us  that  they  without  us 
should  not  be  made  perfect."  We  have  to  lay  the  frame- 
work for  a  new  world  in  loyalty  to  the  men  who  sleep  be- 
neath the  poppies  in  the  Flanders  fields.  They  will  not 
rest  there  if  we  prove  unequal  now  to  carrying  forward 
the  work  that  they  began.  All  that  has  gone  was  getting 
ready  for  this.  It  was  not  getting  men  and  women  ready 
to  come  to  this  and  then  to  turn  back  again  into  the  past. 
Men  and  women  have  been  brought  up  to  this  through 
such  sacrifice  that  by  that  sacrifice  they  might  be  so  en- 
larged as  to  be  able  now  to  believe  and  to  do  what  in  the 
past  had  been  an  impossible  thing. 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       31 

We  believe  in  the  League  of  Nations  in  the  fourth 
place  because  of  our  obligations  to  what  comes  after  us. 
It  is  irreligious  to  be  disloyal  to  the  future.  Men  and 
women  who  avoid  great  and  pressing  duty  do  not  betray 
the  past  alone.  They  betray  the  future  as  well.  And 
the  problems  that  grow  out  of  the  last  four  years  are  im- 
possible problems  unless  we  provide  instrumentalities  de- 
signed honestly,  however  imperfectly,  to  deal  with  him. 
We  have  to  have  some  form  of  organization  to  cope  with 
international  necessities  which  have  come  out  of  the  war 
and  become  more  intense  and  critical  by  reason  of  the 
war  and  the  terms  of  peace.  Inevitably  the  terms  of 
peace  must  leave  open  and  conditional  many  issues  and 
many  issues  unsettled  or  unwisely  settled.  The  issues 
which  it  seeks  to  close  will  reopen  and  reshape  them- 
selves. Continued  peace  will  depend  upon  their  wise 
handling  in  the  processes  of  life  in  the  years  that  lie  just 
ahead  of  us. 

In  the  fifth  place,  we  need  some  international  associa- 
tion to-day  as  an  instrumentality  of  world  service.  It 
was  a  significant  thing  that  when  they  redrafted  the 
covenant  they  put  in  an  entirely  new  article  covering  the 
proposed  international  expansion  of  the  work  of  the  Red 
Cross.  It  is  tragic  that  religion  has  had  to  be  left  out  of 
the  covenant,  that  we  have  a  constitution  of  the  world 
now  with  no  provision  in  it  for  religious  liberty, — a  con- 
stitution of  all  mankind,  and  that  only  indirectly  can  we 
bring  in  those  great  principles  of  service  that  are  symbol- 
ized by  the  Cross  of  Christ  and  that  draw  their  inspiration 
from  the  spirit  of  Christ  but  cannot  be  there  except  by 
indirection.  It  is  significant  that  they  come  in  under  the 
symbol  of  the  Cross.  It  is  world  service  and  cooperation 
for  which  we  must  prepare  and  provide.  It  is  simply 
indisperiable  that  there  should  be  new  agencies  of  inter- 


32       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

national  service  provided  adequate  to  the  needs  of  the 
new  day.  Is  it  tolerable  that  in  a  world  that  God  made, 
whose  resources  He  made  adequate  to  the  needs  of  all  His 
children,  there  should  be  great  areas  of  mankind  with 
superfluous  supplies  and  other  great  areas  of  mankind  as 
Turkey  and  Persia  and  Russia,  the  Bombay  Presidency, 
Rajputana,  the  Punjab,  where  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
men,  women  and  little  children  are  starving  to  death  for 
lack  of  bread,  while  elsewhere  there  is  abundance  and  to 
spare?  Is  it  tolerable  that  there  should  be  such  a  world? 
We  have  got  to  erect  for  mankind  some  agency  of  inter- 
national service  that  will  do  for  all  men  everywhere  the 
work  that  the  spirit  of  Christ  in  His  Church  insists  should 
now  be  done  to  Christ  Himself,  incarnate  forever  in  the 
need  of  humanity. 

There  are  no  more  difficulties  in  the  way  than  would 
have  prevented,  if  men  had  yielded  to  them,  any  human 
society  whatsoever  at  the  beginning,  no  more  difficulties 
in  the  way  than  would  have  made  impossible  the  original 
federation  of  the  thirteen  colonies,  not  so  many  difficulties 
in  the  way  as  stood  in  the  path  of  the  men  who  drafted 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Whatever  argu- 
ments can  be  made  against  the  federation  of  the  world 
to-day  were  valid  too  against  the  federation  of  the  col- 
onies that  constituted  the  original  United  States.  And  if 
we  believe  that  those  men  would  have  been  disloyal  to 
God  if  they  had  failed  Him  in  that  great  hour  and  had  not 
set  the  boundary  of  freedom  more  wide  and  secure  by 
what  they  did  in  building  this  nation,  by  so  much  we 
believe  must  we  regard  the  men  and  women  of  this  day 
disobedient  if  they  do  not  seek  to  do  for  the  world  now 
as  much  as  they  can  of  w^hat  our  fathers  did  for  it  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  ago.  Men  have  appealed  to  their  exam- 
ples as  debarring  us  from  entering  into  relationship  with 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       33 

the  other  nations  of  the  world  to-day.  Those  men  are 
most  loyal  to  the  great  names  of  the  past  who  seek  to  do 
what  those  men  would  do  to-day  if  they  stood  face  to  face 
with  the  tasks  and  responsibilities  of  this  present  time. 
And  if  we  are  told  that  all  that  is  proposed  is  experiment 
and  that  nobody  can  be  sure  of  the  result,  could  the  same 
thing  not  have  been  said  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  ? 
All  life  and  progress  and  all  stagnation  and  standpatism 
are  experiment  too.  And  it  is  safer  for  us  to  follow  any 
man  who  says  he  believes  in  a  better  world  and  is  going 
to  try  to  get  it  even  if  we  are  not  totally  sure  about  all 
the  prescriptions  than  to  follow  any  man  who  says  he 
knows  all  about  his  prescriptions  because  they  call  only 
for  what  we  have  had  and  says,  "  Come,  let  us  go  back 
again  into  the  known  past."  That  past  is  gone  forever. 
Ten  million  men  died  to  seal  that  past  once  and  for  all 
against  our  retreating  into  it;  died  that  a  new  and  better 
world  might  come,  a  world  in  which  the  children  they 
were  never  to  have  might  have  lived  in  peace  and  quiet- 
ness and  honour  and  love,  or  other  real  children  in  their 
stead. 

Maybe  thoughts  like  these  carry  us  too  far  out  of  our 
own  proper  field.  Let  us  come  back  to  what  lies  central 
to  it  all,— just  three  great  things.  First  of  all,  that  we 
should  conceive  the  work  that  we  have  to  do  to-day  in  the 
existing  relationships  in  which  we  find  ourselves,  in  terms 
of  the  most  comprehensive  brotherhood  and  of  the  min- 
istry that  we  are  to  work  out  in  our  differentiated  activi- 
ties in  behalf  of  the  whole  common  body  of  Christ. 
There  is  to-day  a  deepened  sense  of  denominational  re- 
sponsibility. Those  are  the  traces  in  which  we  are  set 
now  to  draw.  We  shall  do  our  best  for  the  whole  as  each 
body  of  us  inside  the  area  of  its  own  defined  responsibility 
does  in  the  fullest  and  richest  measure  all  the  work  that 


34       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

God  has  given  that  body  to  do,  only  does  it  not  in  the 
spirit  of  isolation  and  of  jealousy  and  of  antagonism  but 
in  the  spirit  of  glad  recognition  of  the  underlying  unity  of 
the  whole  and  of  its  ministry  as  just  its  contribution  to  all 
that  great  body  of  resources  that  at  last  is  to  be  the  com- 
mon wealth  of  the  undivided  body  of  Christ. 

In  the  second  place,  we  should  bring  all  the  massed 
moral  forces,  all  the  massed  spiritual  forces  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  to  bear  upon  our  common  present  responsi- 
bility. Many  have  read  General  Foch's  book  on  "  The 
Principles  of  War,"  to  see  what  there  is  there  in  the 
principles  of  the  great  Marshal  that  might  be  of  service 
to  us  men  and  women  engaged  in  another  and  mightier 
and  more  difficult  conflict  than  his.  Listen  to  these  as 
some  of  these  first  axioms  in  the  earlier  chapters.  "  De- 
feat is  a  purely  moral  result."  "  Strategy  is  only  the  re- 
sult of  character  and  common  sense."  *'  Whatever  is 
done  in  an  army  should  always  aim  at  increasing  its  moral 
strength.  Of  all  mistakes  one  only  is  disgraceful — inac- 
tion." "  Napoleon  always  marched  straight  to  his  goal 
without  in  any  way  bothering  about  the  strategic  plan  of 
his  enemy."  "  Nowhere  can  better  models  be  found  than 
in  the  case  of  Napoleon  who  triumphed  by  taking  advan- 
tage of  human  emotions,  by  giving  to  operations  the  most 
crushing  nature  ever  known,  by  manoeuvering  masses  of 
men."  "  The  mass  absorbs  for  war  all  the  physical  and 
moral  resources  of  the  nation."  We  have  to  mass  our 
resources  against  our  task.  Some  larger  and  richer 
means  of  doing  it  must  yet  be  devised.  We  have  to  mass 
the  total  moral  and  spiritual  power  represented  in  Chris- 
tian faith  and  Christian  sacrifice  upon  the  full  task  of  the 
Christian  Church  in  the  whole  world  to-day. 

And  thirdly, — it  is  good  to  come  back  to  it, — we  have 
to  remember  just  what  life  is;  how  unitary  and  cellular 


THE  GOSPEL  AKD  THE  NEW  WOELD       35 

a  thing  it  is ;  that  the  power  of  the  whole  body  is  no  more 
than  the  power  of  the  aggregate  cellular  life  of  the  body. 
Behind  all  our  larger  organizations  must  lie  the  strength 
and  power  of  local  Christian  faith  and  worship  and 
service. 

But  these  chapters  are  to  deal  rather  with  the  world 
relations  of  Christianity  in  this  new  time.  Our  interest 
is  in  the  bearings  of  the  new;  world  conditions  upon 
Christian  missions. 

It  is  clearer  than  ever  that  the  whole  world  needs  what 
Christianity  purports  to  offer.  A  Japanese  paper,  the 
Herald  of  Asia,  comments  on  the  latent  savagery  in 
man  as  war  has  revealed  it.  "  It  may  be  as  some  aver," 
it  says,  *'  that  in  most  people  all  that  is  needed  is  a  little 
scratching  to  find  the  savage.  We  have  been  civilized 
outwardly  and  to  a  greater  degree  than  we  have  been 
civilized  inwardly.  National  character  has  not  kept  pace 
with  material  development.  Man  has  changed  his  envi- 
ronment but  not  his  heart.  His  power  is  greater  than  his 
self-control.  He  is  advancing  materially  more  rapidly 
than  he  is  advancing  spiritually.  He  is  becoming  to  an 
alarming  extent  his  own  God,  and  what  if  it  prove  a 
devil?  Nations  that  look  no  higher  than  man  can  ex- 
pect nothing  better  than  man.  But  religion  has  much  to 
do  yet  before  it  can  make  a  real  man  out  of  this  human 
animal."  Man  is  his  own  problem.  He  makes  his  own 
misery.  All  that  all  men  need  is  generously  provided  in 
the  world.  There  is  no  reason  for  human  unhappiness 
except  ignorance  and  sin.  The  Gospel  offers  to  care  for 
both.  It  declares  that  in  Christ  and  His  Gospel  are  all 
the  principles  man  requires  for  personal  guidance  and  for 
the  direction  of  society  and  that  the  power  of  Christ  can 
set  man  free  from  sin.  We  have  wars  and  pestilence  and 
want  simply  because  we  will  not  have  God's  will  in  Christ. 


36       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

The  new  world  needs  Him  and  that  is  all  it  does  need. 
It  needs  His  spirit  of  trust  and  brotherhood,  His  forgive- 
ness and  freedom,  His  principle  of  world  organization, 
His  power  of  recreation,  the  fullness  of  the  Gospel  of 
redeeming  love  and  life.  "  What  we  lack  in  our  coun- 
try," writes  a  thoughtful  Japanese,  "  is  Christianity  in 
power  and  in  resurrection."  This  is  the  whole  world's 
lack. 

The  war  has  not  only  illustrated  the  need  of  a  new  life 
for  the  world.  It  has  constituted  an  appeal  to  Christian- 
ity to  launch  forth  upon  its  invisible  resources  and  to  at- 
tempt mightier  tasks,  to  rely  boldly  upon  its  Founder's 
own  words.  "  The  works  that  I  do  shall  ye  do  also,  and 
greater  works  than  these  shall  ye  do  because  I  go  unto  my 
Father."  The  well-nigh  limitless  elasticity  of  the  spirit 
of  sacrifice  and  obedience  and  noble  daring  in  men  and 
nations  which  the  past  years  have  seen  is  a  summons  to 
the  Christian  Church  to  return  to  the  wonder-working 
days,  the  days  of  moral  miracles,  the  days  when  men  joy- 
fully achieved  the  impossible.  The  new  social  psychology 
uses  almost  as  bold  language  as  the  Bible  in  its  declara- 
tion of  what  can  be.  "  The  law  of  the  integration  of  the 
individual,"  says  Mr.  Kidd,  "has  been  the  law  of  the 
supremacy  and  the  omnipotence  of  brute  force.  But 
other  and  higher  integrations  are  now  on  foot  in  the 
world  which  rest  on  mind  and  spirit.  It  is  the  laws  and 
the  meanings  of  these  integrations  which  are  carrying  the 
world  into  new  horizons.  And  in  the  upbuilding  of  the 
civilization  founded  on  this  wider  knowledge  it  is  the 
stones  which  the  builders  of  the  past  have  rejected  which 
are  about  to  become  the  master  stones  of  the  edifice. 
,  .  .  Germany  has  been  the  first  country  of  the  West 
to  bring  home  to  the  minds  of  men,  though  unfortunately 
only  in  relation  to  the  atavisms  of  war,  the  fact  neverthe- 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       37 

less  indisputable  and  of  the  very  highest  significance  to 
civilization,  that  an  entire  nation  may  be  completely  al- 
tered in  character,  in  outlook,  and  in  motive  in  a  single 
generation.  With  the  single  exception  of  gigantic  effort 
devoted  to  the  national  ideal  of  sacrifice  in  the  cause  of 
successful  war,  of  which  the  results  in  recent  history  have 
been  astounding,  the  world  has  witnessed  no  example  in 
its  history  of  the  idealisms  of  mind  universally  imposed 
through  intensive  culture  on  the  youth  of  civilization  in 
conditions  of  emotion  and  with  all  the  equipment  and  re- 
sources of  modern  civilization  in  the  background.  The 
great  systems  of  religion  which  have  come  nearest  to 
realizing  such  a  conception  in  the  past  have  not  so  far 
even  remotely  approached  what  is  possible  under  modern 
conditions  of  knowledge.  We  are  on  the  verge  of  a  new 
era  of  civilization,  and  the  people  or  the  type  of  civiliza- 
tion which  will  first  succeed  in  this  experiment  will  ob- 
tain control  of  all  the  reservoirs  of  force  in  civilization  in 
a  manner  which  has  never  been  thought  possible  in  the 
past.  .  .  .  There  is  absolutely  no  aim,  which  civiliza- 
tion chooses  to  set  before  itself,  which  it  is  not  possible 
for  civilization  to  achieve,  even  to  the  sweeping  away  of 
this  existing  world  and  the  creation  of  a  new  world  in  a 
brief  space  of  time."  If  wholly  apart  from  the  Christian 
Gospel  a  man  can  talk  thus,  what  sort  of  Christians  are 
we  if  we  think  only  in  terms  of  immutability  and  fixed 
fate,  and  forget  that  vastly  bolder  spirit  than  Mr,  Kidd's 
which  breathed  in  St.  Paul  and  in  that  great  campaign 
of  his  which  upheaved  the  world  ? 

The  new  world  will  not  be  irreligious.  Already  the  re- 
actions of  the  war  on  the  non-Christian  religions  are 
marked  and  significant.  Books  like  "  Hinduism,  the 
World  Religion,"  show  how  Hindus  are  ready  to  change 
Hinduism  from  the  ground  up  to  adapt  it  to  the  world 


38       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

unity  which  has  come.  There  never  was  any  such  thing 
as  this  Hinduism.  Its  sheer  manufacture  to-day  is  a  sign 
that  the  world  reahzes  that  it  must  have  the  conception  of 
Christianity.  Chen  Kuan  Chang,  a  Ph.D.  of  Columbia 
University  and  a  member  of  the  Chinese  Parliament  and 
the  leader  in  the  effort  to  have  Confucianism  adapted 
constitutionally  as  the  state  religion  of  China,  in  a  paper 
issued  in  February,  19 19,  puts  forward  Confucianism  as 
the  religion  of  the  united  world : 


"  While  European  scholars  advocate  nationalism,  Chi- 
nese scholars  advocate  universalism.  The  time  appears 
to  have  arrived  when  universalism  should  replace  nation- 
alism and  the  Confucian  principles  of  perfect  peace 
should  be  put  into  practice.  It  is  our  duty  to  persuade 
the  world  to  accept  these  principles. 

"  Confucius  says :  '  When  the  great  principle  of  uni- 
versalism prevails,  the  whole  world  becomes  a  republic; 
the  people  elect  men  of  virtue,  talent  and  ability;  they 
endeavour  to  find  out  the  theory  of  sincere  agreement  and 
cultivate  universal  peace.  Thus  men  do  not  regard  as 
their  parents  only  their  own  parents,  nor  treat  as  their 
children  their  own  children.  Provision  is  made  for  the 
aged  till  their  death,  employment  given  to  the  middle- 
aged,  and  the  means  of  self-development  offered  to  the 
young.  Widowers,  widows,  orphans,  childless  men  and 
those  who  are  disabled  by  disease,  are  all  supported  by  the 
State.  Each  man  has  his  rights,  and  each  woman  her 
individuality,  safeguarded.  They  produce,  not  for  the 
sake  of  throwing  it  away  or  wishing  to  keep  it  for  their 
own  gratification,  disliking  idleness,  the  labour,  but  not 
alone  with  a  view  to  their  own  advantage.  In  this  way 
selfish  schemings  are  suppressed,  and  find  no  way  to 
arise.  Robbers,  filchers  and  the  rebellious  do  not  exist. 
Hence  the  outer  doors  can  remain  open.'  This  is  what  I 
call  universaUsm." 

Thereupon   Chen  Huan   Chang  proceeds  to  outline  a 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       39 

proposed  scheme  of  Universal  Government  in  twenty-five 
planks.     Among  these  are  the  following : 

1.  With  the  object  of  preventing  the  recurrence  of 
dreadful  war  in  the  future  and  attaining  permanent  peace, 
a  Universal  Government  shall  be  established  by  all  the 
nations  of  the  world,  which  should  be  treated  on  an  equal 
standing  irrespective  of  their  distances,  strengths  and 
races.  The  first  principle  of  "  Spring  and  Autumn  "  is 
"  one  government." 

2.  A  Universal  Council  shall  be  established  to  exercise 
the  power  of  Universal  Government,  pass  laws  and  deal 
with  international  questions.  To  this  Council  each  nation 
shall  send  a  representative,  whose  term  shall  be  three 
years,  and  who  may  be  allowed  to  serve  another  term. 
Any  man  holding  office  in  the  Universal  Government  shall 
lose  his  nationality  for  the  time  being,  and  shall  not  be 
subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  his  own  country. 

5.  The  year  in  which  Universal  Government  shall  be 
established  shall  be  considered  the  first  year  of  the  Uni- 
versal Era.  The  different  methods  of  counting  years 
which  are  peculiar  to  religions  and  nations  are  to  be  con- 
tinuously used  by  those  particular  religions  or  nations 
only,  and  not  to  be  used  universally. 

II.  All  the  races  in  the  world,  irrespective  of  colour, 
shall  be  treated  as  equals,  and  no  discrimination  against 
them  is  allowed. 

13.  All  things,  including  spoken  and  written  languages, 
social  duties  and  customs,  shall  be  gradually  regulated 
and  made  uniform. 

14.  All  the  territories  of  the  universe  shall  nominally 
belong  to  the  Universal  Government.  No  nation  shall  be 
allowed  to  own  lands.  But  a  nation  shall  be  allowed  to 
exercise  temporary  control  over  the  areas  it  has  already 
occupied. 

15.  At  the  present  Peace  Conference  boundaries  of  all 
the  nations  shall  be  clearly  defined,  and  the  Universal 
Government  shall  assume  the  responsibility  for  according 


40       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

them  its  protection.  Nations  shall  be  forbidden  to  ex- 
change, buy,  sell  or  occupy  lands  of  other  nations,  in 
order  to  prevent  hostility. 

1 6.  The  Universal  Government  alone  shall  have  the 
right  to  accord  recognition  to  newly  formed  nations.  No 
two  nations  shall  be  allowed  to  amalgamate;  and,  with 
the  consent  of  the  Universal  Government,  one  nation  may 
be  divided  into  two  or  several  smaller  states. 

22.  The  nations  shall  be  independent  and  self-govern- 
ing so  far  as  their  own  affairs  are  concerned.  But  their 
governments,  whether  hereditary  or  elective,  shall  be 
democratic  and  governed  by  popular  will. 

The  King  of  Siam  feels  the  surge  of  the  world  con- 
sciousness and  transcends  the  ancient  and  orthodox  Bud- 
dhist traditions  in  public  recognition  of  the  supernatural 
intervention  in  behalf  of  the  righteous  cause.  On  No- 
vember 19,  1918,  he  issued  his  "  Royal  Proclamation  on 
the  occasion  of  the  Great  Victory  of  the  Allies  " :  "  On 
the  22nd  of  July  of  the  present  year  I  invited  the  Siamese 
people  to  unite  in  an  intercessional  prayer  invoking  the 
Holy  Buddhist  Trinity  and  the  Virtues  of  the  departed 
Sovereigns  of  the  Royal  Chakri  Dynasty  to  grant  aid  and 
vouchsafe  victory  to  the  Grand  Alliance  over  our  enemies. 
.  .  .  People  of  Siam!  Now  that  the  great  blessing 
of  Peace  has  returned  to  this  world  through  the  valour 
and  gallantry  of  the  Military  and  Naval  Forces  and  the 
indomitable  deten nination  of  our  Allies,  we  ourselves,  as 
followers  of  tb:i  Holy  Buddhist  Religion,  hold  the  belief 
that  the  Holy  Buddhist  Trinity,  which  we  all  revere  and 
daily  worship,  and  the  Virtues  of  the  departed  Monarchs 
who  have  been  Protectors  of  the  Siamese  Nation  in  the 
past  have  also  aided  in  the  achievement  of  the  victory 
which  has  brought  about  this  happy  result.  Therefore, 
on  the  2nd  of  December,  which  is  the  anniversary  of  M^ 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       41 

Coronation,  I  will  proceed  to  the  Royal  Plaza  in  the  center 
of  the  Capital  and,  together  with  the  Princes  of  the  Royal 
House,  the  officials  of  the  Government,  the  officers  and 
men  of  My  Army  and  Navy,  and  Corps  of  Wild  Tiger 
Scouts,  will  there  offer  up  a  Thanksgiving  Prayer  to  the 
Holy  Emerald  Image  of  our  Lord  Buddha  and  pay 
reverence  to  the  Royal  Statues  of  the  last  five  reigns, 
which  are  enshrined  in  the  precincts  of  the  Royal  Temple, 
and  invoke  the  Holy  Buddhist  Trinity  and  the  Virtues  of 
My  Royal  Ancestors  to  protect  and  safeguard  our  Siamese 
Nation  and  all  the  nations  with  whom  we  are  allied,  and 
vouchsafe  to  us  all  lasting  peace  and  happiness  and  the 
fullest  enjoyment  of  all  the  fruits  of  victory." 

Hinduism,  Confucianism  and  Buddhism  avow  the 
Christian  ideal  of  humanity.  Islam  alone  is  incompetent 
of  it  and  yet  Islam  also  is  attempting  it  and  in  doing  so 
ceases,  like  Hinduism  and  Buddhism,  to  be  itself.  What 
all  these  faiths  now  feel  after  is  what  Christ  came  to 
fulfill.  They  need  the  fundamental  Christian  conception 
of  humanity. 

And  this  conception  is  essential  to  any  such  elementary 
organization  of  humanity  as  the  League  of  Nations. 
Embodied  in  foreign  missions  the  human  democracy  and 
innate  internationalism  of  Christianity  has  been  preparing 
the  way  for  the  consciousness  of  human  unity  which  the 
war  has  accentuated  and  for  the  expression  of  this  con- 
sciousness in  some  political  instrumentality.  Foreign  mis- 
sions have  rendered  this  service  in  many  ways.  They 
have  communicated  a  religion  to  the  East  which  origi- 
nated In  the  East.  The  fact  of  Christianity  is  an  Inter- 
racial and  International  fact.  Our  Western  faith  came 
from  the  Orient.  Missions  have  bridged  racial  gulfs  and 
interpreted  the  East  and  West  each  to  the  other. 
"  Friends,"  said  a  Chinese  speaker  in  the  city  of  Hwai 


42       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

Yuen,  "  there  are  five  great  races  in  the  world,  white, 
black,  brown,  red  and  skin  colour."  Missions  have 
taught  that  all  the  colours  of  men  are  skin  colour.  They 
have  taught  brotherhood  and  incarnated  the  spirit  of 
service.  They  have  developed  in  diverse  races  a  leader- 
ship sympathetic  with  democracy  and  internationalism, 
loyal  to  their  own  nationalisms  beyond  any  other  claims 
of  the  people,  but  assured  that  the  nation  and  humanity 
are  not  irreconcilable  terms.  There  are  some  who  tell  us 
that  they  are.  But  that  is  just  the  great  falsehood  that 
we  charged  to  Germany.  These  teachers  will  be  telling 
us  next  that  the  family  and  the  nation  are  irreconcilable. 
But  we  know  that  just  as  the  nation  can  be  built  only  on 
perfected  family  life,  so  the  very  end  of  perfected  nation- 
alism is  humanity.  There  was  no  more  powerful 
preacher  of  national  unity  and  national  personality  than 
Joseph  Mazzini,  but  his  voice  was  irresistible  for  the 
nation  because  he  spoke  in  the  name  and  for  the  interest 
of  humanity.  "  God,  Humanity,  the  Fatherland  and  the 
Family  "  were  the  four  terms  of  his  message.  The  nation 
or  the  statesman  that  omits  any  one  of  the  four  distorts 
the  truth  and  invites  the  inevitable  judgment  that  pun- 
ishes error. 

The  new  world  rests  like  all  new  things  on  sacrifice.  A 
body  of  men  greater  than  the  population  of  whole  nations 
died  to  end  one  order  and  to  begin  a  new.  The  spirit  of 
their  dying  should  be  the  spirit  of  our  living.  "  Father," 
wrote  Wilbert  White,  one  of  the  choicest  of  those  who 
died  in  the  war,  saving  another  by  his  own  unhesitating 
sacrifice,  "  life  to  me  now  is  a  whole  lot  more  serious 
matter  than  it  ever  has  been  before.  I  realize  that  I've 
something  to  live  for,  and,  if  necessary,  to  die  for,  and 
I'm  fully  prepared  to  do  either.  If  God  wills  that  I  come 
through  this  war  with  my  senses,  I'm  going  to  get  a  lot 


dPHE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD       43 

of  things  I  was  never  thinking  of  before  .  .  .  and  if 
I'm  not  to  get  back, — well,  I  will  at  least  have  given  my 
life  for  the  right.  It  is  a  great  war  we're  in,  Father,  a 
wonderful  war ;  a  war  between  right  and  wrong,  and  I'm 
in  it  heart  and  soul  to  the  end."  "  Mother,"  wrote  an- 
other young  American,  of  like  spirit  and  character,  Edwin 
Austin  Abbey,  2nd,  "  I  could  leave  at  once.  I  am  so  full 
of  that,  it  drowns  out  every  ambition  or  desire  or  thought 
of  the  future  that  I  have.  I  have  nothing  but  a  great  big 
desire  to  give  myself  to  help  in  this  battle  against  evil." 
The  war  between  right  and  wrong  is  not  ended.  The 
battle  against  evil  is  waging  still.  Old  error  and  false- 
hood and  sin  are  all  here  in  the  new  world.  They  are  in 
the  new  world  everywhere.  No  victory  of  arms  can  des- 
troy them,  for  their  home  is  in  the  heart  of  men.  Only 
one  power  can  follow  them  there  and  achieve  deliverance. 
The  law  of  the  Spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus  and  nought 
else  can  set  us  free  from  the  law  of  sin  and  death  and  give 
us  the  new  earth  with  the  new  heaven  over  it  and  within 
it,  righteousness. 


II 

FOREIGN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  LIGHT  AND 
DARKNESS  OF  THE  WAR 

FOUR  great  mission  fields  were  included  in  the 
actual  physical  area  of  the  war.  The  tides  of 
battle  rolled  to  and  fro  over  each  of  the  three 
great  African  Colonies  of  Germany — German  Southwest 
Africa,  German  East  Africa  and  German  West  Africa 
or  Kamerun.  Some  years  before  the  war,  a  British 
writer  in  a  striking  article  pictured  the  possibility  of  a 
future  battle  between  European  powers  on  the  great 
African  lakes,  watched  in  confused  alarm  by  the  African 
people.  Sooner  than  he  knew  his  imagining  came  true. 
In  mission  station  after  mission  station  appalled  African 
Christians  heard  the  tumult  of  war  and  saw  the  African 
tribes  armed  against  one  another  in  a  conflict  whose 
causes  lay  thousands  of  miles  away. 

One  of  the  most  successful  missions  of  the  American 
churches  was  in  Kamerun.  The  American  Presby- 
terians who  had  for  many  years  worked  both  in  the  Ger- 
man colony  of  Kamerun  and  in  the  French  colony  of  the 
Congo  to  the  south,  on  the  Benito,  Gabun  and  Ogowe 
Rivers,  had  concentrated  all  their  work  in  German  terri- 
tory, finding  there  greater  freedom  from  hampering  re- 
strictions. There  they  had  developed  great  churches  and 
schools.  The  largest  Presbyterian  church  in  the  world  is 
the  church  at  Elat.  Here  also  was  a  remarkable  indus- 
trial school  where  the  African  boys  were  taught  to  be 

44 


FOEEIGN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  WAR  45 

tailors,  carpenters,  farmers,  mechanics,  as  well  as  teachers 
and  preachers.  The  school  and  its  machinery  were  seized 
and  turned  into  an  ammunition  plant.  The  native  people 
were  impressed  into  military  service  either  as  fighters  or 
as  carriers.  The  American  missionaries  whose  govern- 
ment was  at  that  time  still  neutral  in  the  war  were  placed 
in  positions  of  great  difficulty  as  the  issues  of  the  war 
unrolled.  The  Allies  soon  conquered  this  section  of  the 
German  possessions  in  Africa  and  it  passed  into  the  hands 
of  the  French,  who  still  hold  it.  There  were  extensive 
German  Missions  in  northern  Kamerun.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  German  Protestant  missionaries  may  be  allowed 
to  return  to  the  work  they  have  been  doing  there  so  faith- 
fully. If  that  may  not  be,  then  the  French  Evangelical, 
churches  and  the  American  churches  must  be  prepared  to 
take  over  this  trust. 

The  second  field  included  in  the  actual  war  area  was 
the  Province  of  Shantung  in  China,  where,  in  order  to 
make  the  Pacific  safe  for  the  ships  of  the  Allies,  Japan 
wrested  from  Germany  the  harbour  of  Kiao  Chou  Bay 
and  the  city  of  Tsingtau  and  the  claims  which  Germany 
had  extended  into  the  Province  of  Shantung.  In  accom- 
plishing this  Japan  crossed  Shantung  from  the  north,  in- 
vading China's  neutral  soil,  and  not  content  with  taking 
over  Germany's  establishment  she  built  brick  barracks 
along  the  railroad,  filling  them  with  Japanese  troops,  and 
erected  a  great  military  establishment  in  Tsinanfu,  the 
Provincial  capital,  where  she  could  control  not  the  rail- 
road east  and  west  alone  but  also  the  trunk  line  north  and 
south  between  Nanking  and  Tientsin,  and  dominate  the 
entire  government  of  the  province.  She  overran  the 
province  with  Japanese,  as  the  Germans  had  never  done 
with  Germans,  and  introduced  far  and  wide  a  diabolical 
trade  in  morphine.     It  was  absolutely  necessary  that  Ger- 


46       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

man  power  in  Shantung  should  be  overthrown  but  the 
absorption  and  retention  of  so  extensive  and  absolute  con- 
trol of  this  great  province  by  Japan  has  been  the  bitterest 
outcome  of  the  war  to  China  and  has  caused  great  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  Peace  Treaty  to  many  friends  both 
of  Japan  and  China  in  the  West.  On  China's  side  it  is 
urged  that  the  original  acquisition  of  her  rights  in  Shan- 
tung by  Germany  was  by  wrong  and  injustice,  that  Japan 
promised  to  return  what  she  took  from  Germany  to 
China,  that  on  entering  the  war  China  denounced  her 
agreements  with  Germany  and  resumed  all  extorted 
rights,  that  she  needs  and  has  a  right  to  the  return  of  a 
harbour,  which  is  one  of  the  few  remaining  harbours  on 
her  coast  which  European  powers  have  not  absorbed, 
that  she  is  now  striving  to  get  her  national  house  in  order 
and  needs  all  the  help  other  nations  can  give  her  instead 
of  being  pillaged  of  her  resources,  that  she  has  already 
ample  cause  to  distrust  Japan  and  that  the  Japanese  claim 
to  Shantung  can  do  nothing  but  deepen  this  distrust  and 
foster  hatred  between  two  peoples  who  must  live  in 
neighbourly  relations  forever  and  who  ought  to  be  friends. 
On  the  side  of  Japan  it  is  argued  that  Japan  was  asked 
to  drive  Germany  out  of  Shantung  by  Great  Britain,  that 
Germany's  rights  had  been  granted  to  her  by  China  and 
that  it  was  Japan  and  not  China  which  took  them  back 
from  Germany,  that  Great  Britain  is  seeking  Thibet  and 
has  no  intention  of  returning  to  China  what  she  has  taken 
directly  from  her  in  the  past  and  that  since  the  war  be- 
gan France  has  helped  herself  to  more  of  China's  terri- 
tory at  Tientsin,  that  China  is  in  danger  of  breaking  up 
and  that  it  would  be  suicidal  for  Japan  to  run  the  risk 
of  having  some  European  power  in  Shantung,  that  Japan 
has  promised  to  return  to  China  all  but  a  small  part  of 
Kiao  Chou  Bay  and  that  she  will  hold  this  only  on  a  long 


FOEEIGN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  WAE  47 

lease  so  that  in  time  China  may  have  all  back  if  China 
grows  capable  and  trustworthy.  If  only  Japan,  which 
has  learned  so  much  from  the  West,  would  transcend  the 
political  tradition  of  the  West  and  honestly  seek  to  build 
China  up,  to  strengthen  the  best  elements  of  the  nation, 
to  be  an  absolutely  unselfish  friend — this  would  be  to  ex- 
pect more  of  Japan  than  Western  nations  have  been  wont 
to  do,  but  it  would  begin  a  new  day  in  Asia,  and  from  a 
friendly,  grateful  China  Japan  would  gain  more  than  she 
can  ever  wring  from  China  outraged  and  embittered. 

Meanwhile  the  presence  of  Japan  in  Shantung  has  not 
been  without  its  effect  on  Missions.  It  wiped  out  the 
German  mission  work  in  the  province.  The  siege  and 
capture  of  Tsingtau  temporarily  checked  the  American 
Presbyterian  work.  The  discontent  of  the  people  through- 
out the  province  did  not  help  to  increase  their  interest  in 
Christianity.  The  morphine  trade  and  the  Japanese 
method  of  officially  administered  prostitution  were  harm- 
ful moral  contributions.  Group  Five  of  the  Twenty-One 
Demands  threatened  a  politico-religious  Buddhist  propa- 
ganda. The  immediate  effects  of  the  war  did  not  pro- 
mote Christian  missions  in  Shantung. 

The  third  mission  field  affected  directly  by  the  war  was 
the  Turkish  Empire  and  the  Balkan  states.  The  great 
work  of  the  American  Congregational  churches  in  these 
lands  was  shattered.  Some  institutions  were  still  main- 
tained by  the  Congregational  missionaries  and  the  Pres- 
byterian mission  in  Syria  operated  its  schools  throughout 
the  war,  while  the  Syrian  Protestant  College  at  Beirut 
and  Robert  College  and  the  American  College  for  women 
in  Constantinople  ran  on  without  a  break.  The  im- 
measurable catastrophe  was  the  brutal  decimation  of  the 
Armenians.  It  is  not  yet  known  how  many  Armenian 
people  are  left  but  it  will  be  only  a  fraction  of  this  thrifti- 


48       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

est  and  most  capable  section  of  the  populations  of  Turkey. 
And  the  horror  of  murder  and  beastly  cruelty  by  which 
the  Armenians  were  slaughtered  less  mercifully  than 
sheep,  were  accompanied  by  every  possible  physical 
destruction,  moral  atrocity  and  religious  sacrilege.  More 
than  a  thousand  Christian  homes  in  Aintab,  for  example, 
were  entirely  torn  down  by  the  Turks  who  wanted  the 
timber  to  use  for  fuel  or  to  sell  in  the  markets.  For 
three  and  a  half  years  no  church  service  and  no  Sunday 
Schools  were  allov/ed  in  Aintab.  The  Turks  had  made 
one  of  the  churches  into  a  brothel.  In  every  conceivable 
way  they  had  desecrated  these  buildings.  They  had 
despoiled  the  stately  Gregorian  cathedral  of  all  its  treas- 
ures, ripped  out  the  ancient  tiles  with  pickaxes  and  torn 
away  the  marble  stones  of  the  altar.  A  capable  and  just 
minded  observer  in  Mosul  wrote  of  the  facts  which  he 
found  there  and  I  quote  his  report  not  because  it  is  ex- 
ceptionally bad  but  because  so  much  worse  ones  might  be 
quoted : 

"  Great  droves  of  refugees  were  herded  here.  One  can 
speak  of  it  in  no  other  way.  They  came  driven  like 
cattle  and  on  their  arrival  here  were  herded  like  cattle  in 
open  fields.  The  good-looking  girls  and  women  were 
carried  into  the  city  and  disposed  of  in  Moslem  harems, 
as  mistresses  to  officers  and  in  the  public  brothels.  The 
remainder  were  left  to  drag  out  a  miserable  existence  in 
the  open  without  any  definite  or  certain  food  supply. 

"  The  great  majority  of  these  multitudes  herded  thus 
outside  the  city  perished  with  hunger,  cold  and  disease; 
some  scattered  among  the  Christian  villages  and,  let  it  be 
noted,  among  the  villages  of  the  Yezidees,  a  sect  some- 
times spoken  of  as  '  Devil  Worshippers '  and  both  Chris- 
tians and  Yezidees,  although  nearly  as  bad  off  as  the 
strangers  and  living  in  constant  fear  of  massacre,  shared 
their  meagre  supplies  with  them.  Some  filtered  into  the 
city  and  struggled  with  the  street  dogs  for  a  living.     The 


FOEEIGN  MISSIONS  m  THE  WAE  49 

Official  and  military  class,  including  most  of  the  Ger- 
mans, seem  to  have  been  utterly  callous  to  the  pleas  of 
these  unfortunates,  kicking  and  clubbing  them  from  be- 
fore their  doors,  not  only  refusing  to  aid  them  but  f rown- 
mg  upon  the  efforts  of  more  charitable  ones  to  feed  them. 
This  is  not  true,  however,  of  the  Moslem  population  of 
the  city  as  a  whole,  among  whom  were  many  who  were 
kindly  disposed  toward  the  destitute  Christians  and  fed 
them.  Many  of  these,  however,  bestowed  their  charity 
m  order  to  win  converts  to  Islam.  Since  the  coming  of 
the  British  army,  many  girls  and  women  have  been  re- 
covered from  such  homes  where  they  were  being  cared 
for  but  held  as  Moslem  converts,  and  I  am  told  by  the 
Armenian  Bishop  that  hundreds  still  remain  concealed. 

"The  distress  of  the  war  period  culminated  last  win- 
ter in  a  dire  famine  which  wasted  Christian  and  Moslem 
alike.  The  most  trustworthy  estimates  I  have  been  able 
to  secure  would  place  the  number  of  deaths  from  starva- 
tion and  disease  during  the  winter  between  35,000  and 
50,000.  To-day  I  saw  photographs  of  a  Moslem  and  his 
wife  m  chains,  another  showing  them  hanging  on  the 
gallows;  a  third  gruesome  picture  shows  the  heads  of 
children  killed  by  them.  The  meat  is  said  to  have  been 
sold  in  the  market  and  it  was  for  this  crime  they  were 
hanged. 

"One  of  the  saddest  pictures  I  have  seen  was  in  a 
yard  where  nearly  one  hundred  girls  have  been  segre- 
gated by  the  medical  authorities.  In  looks  and  appear- 
ance they  were  much  above  the  ordinary  refugees,  for 
It  was  because  of  their  beauty  and  social  position  'they 
had  been  selected  for  the  prostitution  into  which  they 
were  forced.  Their  homes  were  from  all  over  Asia 
Minor,  from  Constantinople  to  Erzerum,  some  of  them 
evidendy  homes  of  wealth  and  refinement.  As  they 
gathered  about  me,  some  of  them  weeping,  some  of  them 
angiy  and  resentful,  they  begged  to  be  set  free." 

Over  the  various  mission  centers  of  Turkey  the  storm 
of  war  swept  once,  twice,  and  again,  before  at  last  the 
armies  moving  northward  from  Egypt,  north  and  north- 


60       THE  GOSPEL  A^B  THE  NEW  WOELD 

west  from  the  Persian  gulf,  and  the  collapse  of  Bulgaria 
behind,  put  an  end  to  Turkey  and  the  rule  of  Turkey  over 
Christian  populations  forever.  So  the  capitulations  are 
abolished  once  for  all  by  the  abolition  of  the  power  which 
could  not  become  a  free  nation,  which  could  not  exclude 
the  people  of  free  nations  and  could  only  set  up  a  com- 
promise with  their  presence.  If  Christianity  is  not  now 
to  have  a  free  course  in  the  territories  which  were  Turkey 
it  will  be  Christian  nations  which  will  be  responsible  for 
the  hindrance. 

The  fourth  mission  field  harassed  by  the  war  was 
Persia.  The  armies  of  Russia  or  Turkey  or  both  held 
every  mission  station  in  Western  Persia  and  some  of 
these  stations  changed  hands  three  or  four  times  during 
the  war.  One  of  them,  Urumia,  suffered  more  perhaps 
than  any  other  mission  station  in  the  world.  Protected 
for  a  time  by  the  Russians  and  for  a  time  by  the  armed 
Assyrian  and  Armenian  Christians  themselves,  after  four 
years  of  hardship,  of  mingled  horror  of  repeated  flight 
and  famine  and  oppression,  the  entire  Christian  popula- 
tion at  last  poured  out  in  one  great  hegira  of  nearly 
80,000  souls  to  the  south.  Attacked  by  the  Kurds,  dis- 
organized, without  food  or  transportation,  losing  the  first 
week  their  one  trusted  guide  and  protector,  Dr.  William 
A.  Shedd,  who  died  of  cholera  near  Sain  Kala,  as  he 
sought  to  protect  the  rear  of  the  terror-stricken  host,  tens 
of  thousands  of  the  nation  perished.  It  can  be  safely 
said  that  of  all  the  people  who  suffered  from  the  war  the 
Assyrian  or  Nestorian  Christians  suffered  most.  They 
were  a  neutral  and  pacific  people,  and  the  Persian  section 
of  them  lived  in  a  neutral  land.  If  the  mountain  Assyrian 
tribes  at  the  last  acted  not  unlike  their  Kurdish  and 
Mohammedan  oppressors,  though  such  action  was  wrong, 
it  was  the  sequel  to  indescribable  provocation-     Perhaps 


FOEEIGN  MISSIOl^S  IN  THE  WAE  51 

two-thirds  of  the  nation  has  been  wiped  out  and  the 
remnant  is  still  awaiting  a  just  reestablishment  with  ade- 
quate reparation  in  their  old  homes  in  eastern  Turkey  and 
about  the  Urumia  Lake.  Most  of  their  pastors  and  priests 
were  slain.  Their  villages  were  pillaged  and  destroyed. 
Their  women  and  girls  were  outraged.  Their  pitiful  lot 
is  one  more  evidence  of  the  intolerable  wrong  of  leaving 
Christian  populations  to  the  unchecked  evil  of  modern 
Moslem  governments.  Urumia  is  still  a  scene  of  anarchy 
and  in  the  summer  of  19 19  each  effort  of  the  missionaries 
to  return  even  for  relief  work  for  Moslems  and  Kurds 
had  been  frustrated  and  no  Christian  life  was  safe,  and 
Persians  and  Kurds  were  at  one  another's  throats.  When 
once  the  Kurds  are  broken  and  the  poison  of  Turkish 
influence  is  forever  gone  the  Persians,  who  are  a  kindly 
and  courteous  people,  with  such  help  as  they  themselves 
realize  they  need  from  without,  may  be  expected  to  re- 
establish peace  and  to  begin  a  new  day  in  this  mangled 
area  of  Azerbaijan.  But  the  Persians  will  never  do  it 
here  or  elsewhere  in  Persia  without  the  moral  regenera- 
tion and  reenforcement  of  Christianity. 

It  is  a  remarkable  thing  that  in  each  one  of  these  four 
fields  the  mission  work  went  on  throughout  the  war  with- 
out the  permanent  abandonment  of  a  single  mission  station 
and  that  in  almost  all  of  the  stations  outside  of  interior 
Turkey  missionaries  are  at  their  work  to-day  as  though 
there  had  been  no  war.  In  some  of  the  African  stations 
the  largest  Christian  congregations  assemble  that  can  be 
found  anywhere  in  the  world.  In  the  midst  of  upheaval 
and  change  one  force  which  has  held  steadily  on  its  way 
has  been  the  force  of  Christian  missions. 

The  more  important  question,  however,  is  as  to  the 
influence  of  the  war  on  the  mind  of  the  non-Christian 
people.    Has  the  war  sealed  the  thought  of  Asia  and 


52       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

Africa  against  Christianity  as  a  Western  religion,  des- 
troyed by  the  breakdown  of  Western  industrial  civiliza- 
tion ?  Not  so.  The  men  of  Asia  and  Africa  are  able  to 
make  distinctions  as  well  as  we.  As  Prince  Damrong 
said  to  us  in  Siam,  "  Do  not  fear  that  we  think  Christi- 
anity is  responsible  for  the  war.  We  understand  per- 
fectly well  that  it  is  not  Christianity  which  has  failed,  but 
the  Western  nations,  and  that  if  only  peoples  of  the  West 
had  practiced  the  precepts  of  Christ  there  would  have 
been  no  such  awful  struggle."  What  Christ  came  to  do, 
what  spirit  and  message  the  missionaries  bear  from  Him 
to  the  world,  is  clearer  to  the  minds  of  the  non-Christian 
peoples  to-day  than  it  was  five  years  ago. 

The  war  saw  an  appalling  financial  burden  laid  upon 
missions  as  a  result  of  the  increase  in  the  price  of  silver. 
This  increase  was  due  to  many  causes — to  a  diminution 
in  the  output  of  silver  from  the  mines,  to  the  immense  in- 
crease of  other  forms  of  currency,  increasing  thereby  the 
proportionate  value  of  silver ;  to  the  hoarding  of  silver  in 
India  and  China  and  the  great  demand  for  silver  for  cur- 
rency in  these  lands  and  for  the  Chinese  and  Indians  in- 
volved in  the  war;  to  the  decrease  of  trade,  diminishing 
the  demand  for  exchange  on  the  West.  The  result  was 
the  advance  in  the  price  of  the  silver  currency  of  lands 
like  China  where  the  Mexican  dollar  nearly  doubled  in 
value,  and  in  Persia  where  the  Toman  more  than  doubled. 
Now  the  Rupee  in  India  and  the  Yen  in  Japan  have  also 
advanced.  Some  mission  boards  had  to  appeal  to  their 
constituencies  for  additional  contributions  of  over  half 
a  million  dollars  merely  to  provide  for  the  depreciation 
in  the  silver  purchasing  power  of  American  money. 

But  there  are  deeper  aspects  in  which  the  war  brought 
to  light  the  significance  of  the  missionary  enterprise. 
-  In  a  day,  and  against  the  background,  of  disorder  and 


FOEEIGN  MISSIOI^S  IN  THE  WAR  63 

destruction,  we  saw  Christian  missions  as  a  great,  peace- 
able and  constructive  agency  of  equalization,  transforma- 
tion and  freedom.     The  American  people  believed  that 
the  war  in  which  they  became  involved  was  a  righteous 
and  necessary  war.     But  war  can  never  be  anything  else 
than  destruction,  the  wiping  out  of  wrong  and  the  tear- 
ing down  of  false  power,  and  never  in  human  history  was 
there  such  a  titanic  work  of  destruction  done.     If  the 
billions  of  dollars  and  the  millions  of  men  engulfed  in  the 
war  could  only  have  been  devoted  to  the  great  processes 
of  human  progress,  we  could  have  lifted  humanity  for- 
ward in  this  decade  by  the  sheer  leap  of  a  century.     This 
may  not  now  be.     But  it  is  against  all  this  inevitable 
shadow  that  we  see  more  clearly  than  ever  the  honour 
and  glory  of  the  missionary  ideal  and  its  work  of  un- 
selfish and  creative  love.     "  I  confess,"  said  Sir  James 
Meston,  the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  United  Prov- 
mces,  at  the  opening  of  some  new  buildings  of  the  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  in  the  Ewing  Christian  College 
at  Allahabad,  India,  "  that  after  I  have  been  here  and 
spent  an  hour  on  the  farm,  I  always  go  away  seeing 
visions.     I  see  a  vision  of  a  very  different  India  from 
what  we  have  now— of  an  India  in  which  the  whole  coun- 
tryside has  been  metamorphosed  by  agricultural  skill  and 
science;  in  which  its  rustic  people  are  comfortable,  in 
which  the  land  is  immune  from  the  ravages  of  famine,  in 
which  the  ground  is  producing  three,  four,  five,  six  times 
what  it  produces  now;  and  as  a  correlative  to  that  I  see 
a  vision  of  the  great  towns,  busy  with  the  hum  of  looms 
and  a  purr  of  electric  machinery,  which  I  hope  means 
smokeless  chimneys,  turning  out  the  comforts  and  luxuries 
which  a  prosperous  countryside  will   require.     It  is  a 
vision  of  the  future  of  a  great  and  prosperous  countiy 
striding  forward  to  higher  things."     War  cannot  work 


64       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

a  transformation  like  this.  It  can  be  wrought  only  by 
the  constructive  ministries  of  good-will.  In  the  very 
darkest  hours  of  this  war  and  the  most  cruel  places  of  the 
earth  we  have  seen  the  missionaries  accomplishing  these 
ministries.  At  the  meeting  of  the  Presbyterian  Board  of 
Foreign  Missions,  on  October  22,  1918,  the  Board  looked 
upon  the  vivid  symbol  of  them  when  a  faded  and  frayed 
American  flag  was  presented  to  it  with  the  following 
letter: 

Gentlemen  : 

American  missionaries  in  the  foreign  field  love  the 
American  flag;  no  less  has  the  American  flag  cause  for 
gratitude  to  American  missionaries  in  distant  fields.  The 
American  flag  is  honoured  in  the  Orient — an  honour  due 
in  no  small  degree  to  the  missionary's  influence;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  many  American  missionaries  owe  to  the 
American  flag  their  lives  and  the  lives  of  many  natives 
who  have  clung  to  them  in  times  of  trouble. 

I  have  the  honour,  on  behalf  of  the  members  of  Urumia 
Station,  to  present  to  you  a  well-worn  flag  which  was 
graciously  used  of  God  in  defending  the  rights  of  the 
weak  and  defenseless  in  Urumia,  Persia,  during  a  time 
of  great  turmoil. 

This  flag  was  hoisted  over  the  gateway  leading  to  the 
main  compound  of  your  Mission  Station  in  the  City  of 
Urumia  (West  Persia  Mission)  soon  after  the  evacua- 
tion of  the  city  by  the  Russian  Army  on  January  2,  191 5, 
and  before  the  entrance  into  the  city  of  the  Kurdish 
vanguards  of  the  Turkish  Army  on  January  4,  1915.  It 
thereafter  flew  uninterruptedly  until  after  the  Russian 
Army  had  reentered  the  city.  May  24,  1915,  and  again 
taken  up  the  reins  of  government — a  period  of  about  five 
months. 

During  those  months  it  was  an  instrument  under  God's 
grace  in  saving  the  lives  of  i5,chdo  defenseless  Christians, 
who  had  taken  refuge  under  its  shadow,  and  indirectly  it 
was  a  strong  influence  for  quiet  and  order  in  a  much 
wider  circle. 


FOEEIGN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  WAR  55 

Could  this  flag  speak,  it  would  tell  you  heartrending 
tales  of  sorrow  and  suffering,  of  injustice  and  extortion, 
of  cruelty  and  death ;  it  would  preach  powerful  sermons 
on  faith,  love,  sympathy;  it  would  make  you  feel  the 
gratitude  which  it  read  in  the  15,000  pairs  of  eyes  that 
were  daily  upturned  during  these  sad  months — a  gratitude 
which  is  alive  to-day,  toward  God  and  toward  Christian 
America,  and  which  will  live  on 'through  generations. 

Fraternally  yours  in  the  great  Cause, 

(Signed)         Hugo  A.  Muller. 

The  flag  would  not  have  been  there  if  missionaries  had 
not  raised  it,  and,  after  all,  it  was  the  missionaries  and 
the  ideas  which  they  represent  which  gave  the  multitudes 
safe  shelter  under  its  folds,  for  the  armies  of  its  govern- 
ment were  six  thousand  miles  away. 

In  a  day,  and  against  a  background  of  strife  and  divi- 
sion, the  war  showed  us  Christian  missions  as  a  great 
agency  of  friendship  and  unification.  The  war  opened 
awful  chasms  in  humanity,  and  its  breaches  have  not  left 
unaffected  the  international  missionary  fellowship,  but 
they  have  not  yet  destroyed  it  and  in  the  midst  of  all  the 
inevitable  divisions  of  the  war  something  of  the  principle 
of  super-nationalism  has  been  maintained  by  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  alone.  The  American  Lutherans  cared 
for  the  German  missionary  work  in  India,  the  American 
Presbyterians  helped  to  provide  for  the  French  mission- 
ary work  in  Africa,  and  for  months  at  the  beginning  of 
the  war  the  discontinued  salaries  of  German  missionaries 
in  India  were  met  in  part  by  the  British  missionaries  from 
their  own  scanty  allowances.  And  how  can  the  hurt  of 
the  world  ever  be  healed,  the  chasms  which  have  been 
cleft  closed  again,  except  by  the  balm  and  the  bond  of  a 
great  forgiving  and  unifying  religious  faith,  save  by  the 
acceptance  of  the  Christian  principle  of  the  unity  of  the 


56       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

body  of  humanity  with  Jesus  Christ  as  its  one  Head? 
"  Yes,"  said  a  Japanese  banker  in  New  York,  not  yet  a 
member  of  the  Christian  Church,  who  had  just  been  to 
hear  a  Christian  sermon,  "  I  beheve  that  what  the  preacher 
said  is  true,  that  if  mankind  ever  is  to  be  made  one  it  can 
only  be  in  Christ." 

Amid  the  great  influences  which  thundered  through 
the  world,  but  which  after  all  can  only  do  their  work 
upon  the  surface  of  human  life,  we  saw  the  missionary 
enterprise  with  a  new  vividness  as  a  great  force,  cutting 
into  life's  heart  and  penetrating  to  the  central  character 
of  man.  There  are  days  in  human  history  when  war  is 
the  lesser  evil  and  when  its  necessary  work  must  be  done. 
But  its  influence  can  only  be  structural  and  not  organic. 
It  is  surgery  cutting  away  diseased  and  vicious  tissues, 
but  it  is  not,  and  never  can  be,  one  of  the  deep  and 
organic  processes  of  life.  New  ideals,  new  motives,  a 
new  spirit  and  a  new  and  living  power  are  needed  to 
change  the  world,  not  a  reconstitution  of  political  re- 
lationships but  a  regeneration  of  the  soul  of  humanity. 
Mr.  Morgenthau  discerned  this  and  spoke  of  it  in  his 
tribute  to  the  missionaries  in  Turkey  on  his  return  from 
his  two  years'  service  as  American  Ambassador  in  Con- 
stantinople. "A  residence  of  over  two  years  in  Turkey 
has  given  me  the  best  possible  opportunity  to  see  the  work 
of  the  American  missionaries  and  to  know  the  workers 
intimately.  Without  hesitation  I  declare  my  high  opinion 
of  their  keen  insight  into  the  real  needs  of  the  people  of 
Turke}^  The  missionaries  have  the  right  idea.  They  go 
straight  to  the  foundations  and  provide  those  intellectual, 
physical,  moral  and  religious  benefits  upon  which  alone 
any  true  civilization  can  be  built."  How  deeply  this  in- 
fluence has  penetrated  into  the  world's  life  no  one  can 
adequately  tell.     In  the  years  gone  by,  those  most  com- 


FOEEIGN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  WAE  67 

patent  to  judge  have  declared  it  to  be  the  most  powerful 
and  penetrating  of  all  influences,  and  the  influence  that 
has  wrought  thus  is  changing  the  moral  ideals  of  one-half 
of  humanity.  In  a  recent  article  in  a  Japanese  magazine 
the  writer  pointed  out  the  transformation  that  had  taken 
place  in  the  meaning  of  Japanese  words  in  the  last  twenty- 
five  years,  beginning  with  the  Japanese  word  for  God, 
into  which  the  influence  of  Christianity  had  poured  an 
absolutely  new  meaning.  What  subtler  influence  can 
work  upon  a  nation  than  this?  And  it  is  working  not 
only  through  the  resistless  evangelization  of  a  changed 
national  speech,  but  it  is  striking  home  ever  more  and 
more  to  the  individual  heart. 

But  our  view  of  the  relation  of  the  war  to  Missions 
must  take  a  wider  scope.  What  are  some  of  the  larger 
significances  of  what  we  have  been  through?  We  can 
foresee  the  consequences  neither  of  war  nor  of  peace. 
The  calmest  years  of  life  are  filled  with  forces  that  work 
out  results  which  we  cannot  calculate  in  advance  and 
which  often  startle  us  with  the  more  vivid  surprise  just 
because  they  operated  in  silence  and  obscurity.  Not  less 
and  perhaps  not  more  the  issues  of  war,  radically  alter- 
ing our  normal  courses  of  action  and  trends  of  develop- 
ment, and  dislocating  our  judgments  and  previsions, 
present  us  with  new  situations  on  which  we  had  not  calcu- 
lated and  to  which  we  have  to  make  a  Vv^holly  new  ad- 
justment of  all  our  ideas  and  practices. 

It  would  be  easy  to  pick  out  any  war  in  history  and 
to  show  how  different  its  effects  were  from  all  human 
expectation.  No  one  thought  that  our  concern  for  Cuba 
and  our  consequent  war  with  Spain  would  give  us  re- 
sponsibility for  part  of  Asia  and  make  us  schoolmasters 
of  the  Philippines  to  prepare  them  for  freedom.  And 
even  when  it  became  apparent  that  such  a  duty  was  to 


58       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

fall  to  us  no  one  was  able  to  conceive  what  the  effects  of 
its  discharge  would  be  upon  our  national  temper,  our 
home  politics,  or  our  international  relations.  So  incom- 
petent are  we  to  forecast  what  the  years  or  even  the  days 
will  bring  forth  that  it  is  unprofitable  to  speculate  as  to 
what  the  political  and  moral  consequences  of  this  war 
will  be.  We  do  not  know  yet  what  effects  the  struggle 
has  had  upon  the  minds  of  men  in  Europe  and  on  other 
continents.     And  our  only  wise  course  is  to  wait  and  pray. 

But  yet  this  is  not  all.  There  is  a  work  of  clear  think- 
ing and  fearless  acting  to  be  done  in  preparation  for  the 
iestablishment  and  continuance  of  just  and  enduring 
peace.  And  in  the  interest  of  the  work  of  propagating 
throughout  the  world  the  gospel  of  love  and  righteousness 
there  is  room  for  a  weighing  of  some  of  the  lessons  of 
this  awful  struggle. 

We  learned,  as  I  have  already  said,  with  an  amazing 
and  convincing  suddenness  that  the  world  is  a  unity. 
This  is  the  fundamental  axiom  of  the  missionary  enter- 
prise. It  holds  that  all  mankind  are  one  family,  that 
nations  and  men  cannot  set  themselves  off  from  others  as 
in  possession  of  peculiar  privilege  or  capable  of  isolation, 
that  the  truth  is  the  truth  for  all,  and  that  all  men  are 
members  one  of  another,  so  that  if  one  member  of  the 
great  body  suffers  all  the  members  suffer  with  it.  The 
non-missionary  or  anti-missionary  spirit  has  assumed  that 
nalio*ns  could  go  off  alone  and  live  their  life  in  negligence 
of  other  peoples.  But  it  is  not  so.  Within  a  week  from 
its  beginning  the  effects  of  the  war  were  felt  to  the 
farthest  corners  of  the  earth.  Transportation  between 
nations  was  disarranged  or  ceased  altogether,  mails 
stopped,  factories  closed  in  Santiago  and  Shanghai. 
*ilemote  islands  of  the  Pacific  and  villages  in  interior 
Africa    were    involved    in    the    conflict.       Missionary 


FOEEIGK  MISSIOls^S  IK  THE  WAE  59 

babies  in  the  West  Coast  jungles  dependent  upon  con- 
densed milk  from  home  were  cut  oif  from  their  supply. 
The  delicate  mechanism  of  exchange  was  jarred.  Inter- 
national activities  of  trade  and  philanthropy  were  annihi- 
lated. The  whole  world  felt  throughout  every  fibre  and 
tissue  the  shock  of  an  experience  which  made  it  aware  as 
never  before  of  the  truth  of  Paul's  conception  of  hu- 
manity as  an  organism  with  a  common  life. 

The  world  can  never  again  be  as  it  was.  From  the 
very  outset  of  the  war  it  saw  and  said  "  This  war  is  not 
an  affair  of  the  belligerent  peoples  alone.  It  is  an  affair 
of  humanity.  All  humanity  is  suffering  from  it.  A  swift 
and  sure  peace  which  will  mean  enduring  justice  and 
established  and  immovable  righteousness  is  the  concern 
of  all  the  world."  Well,  if  it  be  so,  foreign  missions  may 
speak  again  to  the  Church  in  the  hope  that  their  rejected 
appeal  may  be  heard,  "  All  nations,  every  creature,  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth,  all  men,"  tliey  may  say,—"  these 
were  the  thought  of  Christ,  that  He  might  bring  them  all 
into  one  in  Him."  A  new  realization  of  the  truth  of 
human  unity  is  one  meaning  of  the  war  for  foreign 
missions. 

But  some  will  say,  "  Preposterous !  War  is  the  utter 
denial  of  unity,  not  its  affirmation.  The  war  sowed  dis- 
cords and  racial  hates  which  will  never  be  outgrown. 
Look  at  the  prejudices  and  distrusts  which  have  produced 
the  war,  and  which  were  themselves  the  lasting  products 
of  past  wars.  Men  hated  one  another  as  never  before 
in  history. .  It  was  the  utter  breakdown  of  brotherhood  *- 
and  unity.  The  benevolent  claim  of  foreign  missions  is 
a  delusion."  This  is  the  apparently  obvious  fact,  and 
there  Is  only  too  much  evidence  that  between  even  con- 
scientious men  of  different  nationalities  the  rent  that  ha^ 
opened  is  terrible.     And  all  international  Christian  serv- 


60       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

ices  were  subjected  to  a  fearful  strain  which  tested  to  the 
uttermost  the  forbearance,  fair-mindedness,  and  charita- 
bleness of  Christian  men.  But  the  test  will  be  met. 
Nations  of  honest  common  people  cannot  cherish  abiding 
wrath  against  each  other.  And  while  foreign  missions, 
which  are  the  great  Christian  internationalism,  have  been 
put  under  a  new  strain,  the  strain  has  been  for  the  most 
part  endured. 

The  war  meant  also  a  new  revelation  of  the  need  of 
the  work  which  Christ  alone  can  do  for  men  everywhere. 
There  have  been  many  who  saw  no  need  of  Christ. 
"  What  did  he  mean  ? "  exclaimed  one  of  our  college 
presidents  with  regard  to  the  declaration  of  a  speaker  in 
the  college  chapel.  "  He  said  that  a  man  absolutely 
needed  Jesus  Christ.  Nonsense.  Many  a  man  gets 
along  very  well  without  Him."  Culture  and  civilization 
were  supposed  to  suffice  for  men  without  Christ.  And 
in  the  non-Christian  nations  man  was  held  to  be  able  to 
get  along  very  well  without  the  Gospel.  But  men  are  not 
so  sure  now.  They  doubt  whether  man  is  much  more 
than  the  brute  which,  as  they  believed,  he  was  at  the  be- 
ginning. "  In  fact,"  says  the  Allahabad  Pioneer,  which 
has  always  had  a  very  lofty  opinion  of  European  develop- 
ment, "  we  must  give  up  the  idea  of  evolution  in  the 
essentials  of  the  human  race."  In  Europe,  or  America  or 
Asia,  we  see  now,  man  is  incapable  in  himself  of  realizing 
the 'Kingdom  of  God  on  the  earth.    He  needs  the  Gospel. 

But,  once  again,  are  we  not  compelled  now  to  admit 
#hat  the  Gospel  is  as  much  of  a  failure  as  man?  Did  not 
Europe  have  the  Gospel?  Why  did  it  not  prevent  this 
strife  and  take  fear  from  men's  hearts  and  make  them 
brothers?  If  it  did  not  do  this  for  Europe,  can  it  do  it 
for  Asia?  Is  Asia  not  better  off  with  religions  under 
which  no  such  awful  struggles  have  occurred  in  our  day? 


FOEEIGN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  WAE  61 

We  ask  these  questions,  men  say,  and  what  will  become 
of  foreign  missions  when  the  non-Christian  people  ask 
such  questions  ? 

At  home  such  questions  will  not  cut  the  nerve  of  mis- 
sionary consecration  and  prayer,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  if  it  had  been  practiced  Christianity  would  have 
prevented  strife  and  stripped  men's  hearts  of  fear  and 
made  them  brothers.  The  most  interesting  phenomenon 
in  all  the  discussions  of  the  war  was  the  way  in  which 
men  of  all  types  of  opinion  have  recognized  that  only 
religion  can  end  war.  Statesmanship  and  diplomacy  and 
science  and  trade  and  organization  and  armaments  and 
education  have  not  prevented  it.  They  have  made  it  only 
more  terrible.  Nothing  but  the  grace  of  God  transform- 
ing men  and  uniting  them  in  unselfishness  and  love  can 
ever  make  peace. 

And  not  only  have  we  had  a  new  revelation  of  the 
need  of  the  real  evangelization  of  men,  but  we  have  had 
also  a  new  revelation  of  the  worth  of  men  to  God.  When 
has  there  been  such  loyalty,  such  sacrifice,  such  devo- 
tion,—the  women  giving  up  their  husbands  and  sons,  and 
cultivating  the  fields  and  making  supplies  and  nursing  the 
wounded,  and  men  going  by  the  tens  of  thousands  to  their 
death  ?  Not  only  was  man  seen  in  all  the  nakedness  of 
his  utter  moral  need,  but  he  was  seen  also  in  the  raw 
glory  of  the  ruin  of  his  God-like  lineage.  "  Let  us  make 
man  in  our  own  likeness,"  said  God,  and  the  likeness  is 
there  still  in  Asia  and  Africa  as  well  as  Europe.  Foreign 
missions  will  not  be  told  so  often  now  that  "  the  heather 
are  not  worth  saving." 

But  on  the  foreign  field  has  the  war  meant  the  end 
of  the  unique  claims  of  Christianity?  Have  the  non- 
Christian  people  said,  "  Where  now  is  the  validity  of  your 
argument,  for  the  superiority  of  Christianity  ?    Look  at 


62       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

the  Christian  nations  waging  such  a  war  as  we  have  never 
known  in  Asia.  You  have  told  us  that  Christianity  was 
superior  to  our  religion,  and  you  have  pointed  us  to  what 
you  called  the  Christian  nations  and  their  wonderful 
Christian  civilization  as  the  proof.  Is  this  it?  If 
Christianity  is  to  be  judged,  as  you  have  asked  us  to  judge 
it,  by  the  civilization  it  has  produced,  we  will  judge  it  so, 
and  we  reject  it."  Wherever  Christianity  has  been  propa- 
gated by  the  arguments  of  Christian  civilization  this  reply 
of  the  non-Christian  world  will  cut  in.  We  rejoice  that 
it  will.  There  has  been  altogether  too  much  confused 
thinking  and  teaching  as  to  what  Christianity  is.  It  is  not 
something  political  or  social  or  philanthropic.  The  best 
fruitage  it  was  ever  able  to  bear  on  the  tree  of  humanity 
was  not  Christianity.  And  it  will  be  a  blessing  if  the  dis- 
tinctions which  we  are  now  forced  to  make  drive  us  back 
to  the  New  Testament,  which  knows  nothing  whatever 
about  Christianity,  which  never  uses  the  word,  but  which 
does  deal  with  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man,  and 
with  a  personal  discipleship  and  fellowship  which  was  the 
message  and  purpose  of  Christ. 

The  legitimate  and  wholesome  retort  of  the  non- 
Christian  world  to  common  but  false  forms  of  missionary 
apologetic  will  not,  however,  retard  the  progress  of  the 
Christian  faith  in  non-Christian  lands.  It  will  rather 
insure  the  progress  of  the  faith  in  purer  character.  For 
the  people  of  the  non-Christian  world  are  now  just  what 
they  were.  Their  needs  are  just  what  they  have  always 
been,  and  just  what  men's  needs  are  everywhere;  and 
only  Christ,  not  Christianity  or  civilization,  can  meet 
those  needs. 

To  speak  of  but  one  other  aspect  of  the  war*s  signif- 
icance to  Christian  missions,  we  are  to  hope  that  it  will 
recall  the  Church  to  the  sacrificial  missionary  principle. 


FOREIGN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  WAR  63 

The  Church  as  a  whole  has  never  done  anything  sacri- 
ficial. Individual  Christians  have  followed  Christ,  but 
the  Church,  as  Duff  said,  has  played  with  missions.  An 
average  of  a  few  dimes  a  year  from  each  member  has 
represented  the  measure  of  her  missionary  giving  and 
now  there  are  some  who  doubt  whether  the  Church  can 
continue  to  do  even  this.  The  financial  uncertainties,  the 
increased  taxation,  the  high  prices,  the  reduced  dividends, 
all  make  it  impracticable,  men  say,  to  keep  up  old  gifts 
and  to  advance  to  larger  things.  But  look  at  the  war. 
Great  nations  rose  to  the  height  of  an  unlimited  sacrificial 
devotion.  Is  the  Church  to  show  less  loyalty  to  Christ 
and  His  honour  ?  The  war  which  shadowed  the  world  and 
'the  sacrifices  which  were  willingly  made  in  it  should 
shame  our  timidity  and  our  tame  trifling  with  duty,  and 
call  us  to  deal  with  life  as  a  reality  and  with  the  work  of 
Christ  in  the  world  as  worth  more  devotion  than  national 
honour  or  commercial  advantage  or  racial  pride.  Every 
soldier  dying  for  his  country  on  a  European  battle-field, 
ever;^'  home  giving  up  its  blood  and  tears  a  summons  and 
a  reproach  to  us  men  and  women  who  have  accepted  the 
Christ  of  the  Cross  but  not  the  Cross  of  Christ.  If  they 
have  counted  their  cause  above  their  lives  and  their 
every  possession,  why  not  we  ?  What  they  freely  yielded 
to  war  and  death  shall  not  Christians  give  with  joy  to  the 
Lord  of  Life  and  Peace  ? 

The  one  great  lesson  of  the  war  which  is  to  be  car- 
ried up  into  the  coming  day  is  the  lesson  that  now,  not 
less  but  more,  with  a  richer  devotion,  must  all  those 
forces  be  intensified  and  flung  forth  which  can  build  crea- 
tively the  new  order  which  must  come  upon  the  earth. 
If,  as  we  believe,  we  entered  the  great  conflict  to  check 
wrong,  to  make  the  world  a  safe  place  for  free- 
dom, to  forward  the  cause  of  brotherhood  and  equality, 


64       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

to  secure  justice  for  the  weak  and  to  establish  the  law 
that  strength  is  given  for  service,  then,  the  forces  which 
were  best  fitted  to  produce  these  results  before  the  war, 
and  on  which  alone  we  can  rely  to  produce  them  after- 
wards, must  not  be  abated  or  diminished.  Every  worthy 
end  that  the  nation  believes  that  it  had  in  view  in  the 
war  is  an  end  for  which  the  Christian  spirit  has  wrought 
and  must  still  work.  No  matter  what  sacrifice  must  be 
made,  the  missionary  enterprise  must  not  be  sacrificed. 
Even  though  its  maintenance  during  the  coming  years 
will  cut  into  the  capital  of  the  Christian  Church  that 
price  must  be  paid.  The  men  who  gave  their  lives  on  the 
battle-field  were  not  serving  the  nation  out  of  their  in- 
come, they  were  pouring  out  the  last  and  utmost  measure. 
Christ  has  a  right  to  ask,  in  the  service  which  alone  can 
establish  righteousness  upon  the  earth,  that  His  people 
shall  give  Him  not  a  fraction  of  their  income  only,  nor 
all  of  their  income  alone,  but  that  they  shall  lay  down 
at  His  feet  their  very  last  and  all.  This  is  the  word  of 
the  war  to  the  new  day  of  peace.  * 


Ill 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  RACE  PROBLEM 

ONE  of  the  two  greatest  unsolved  problems  in 
the  world  to-day  is  the  problem  of  race.  The 
other,  I  suppose,  is  the  problem  of  Church  and 
State.  Next  to  sin  and  selfishness  in  individual  hearts, 
more  woe  and  wrong  and  desolation  have  flov/ed  from 
racial  prejudice  than  from  any  other  one  source.  And 
the  problem  is  not  modern  alone.  It  has  been  here  ever 
since  there  were  diverse  races  in  the  world.  Race  feeling 
has  been  one  great  issue  of  mankind,  one  of  the  central 
and  determining  principles  in  history. 

The  great  movements  of  the  world  have  been  racial  or 
national  movements — the  tidal  wave  of  the  Aryan  peo- 
ples, from  whose  loins  we.  sprang,  spreading  out  from 
central  Asia  in  the  early  morning  of  history;  the  exodus 
of  the  Hebrew  nation  from  Egypt  into  a  land  and  life 
of  its  own;  the  consecutive  streams  of  English,  Roman, 
Dane,  and  Norman  pouring  in  upon  the  isle  from  which 
our  destinies  came  forth;  the  mighty  migration  of  the 
northern  people  when 

"The  end  of  the  world  was  long  ago, 
And  the  ends  of  the  earth  waxed  free. 
When  Rome  was  lost  in  a  sea  of  slaves 
And  the  sun  fell  into  the  sea. 

"When  Cesar's  sun  fell  out  of  the  sky. 
And  whoso  hearkened  right 
Could  only  hear  the  plunging 
Of  the  nations  in  the  night. 

65 


66       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

"  When  the  ends  of  the  earth  came  marching  in 
To  torch  and  cresset  gleam, 
And  the  roads  of  the  world  that  lead  to  Rome 
Were  filled  with  faces  that  moved  like  foam, 
Ivike  faces  in  a  dream"; 

the  flow  of  the  great  sea  of  Huns  which  left  its  deposit 
in  the  modern  nations  of  the  Balkans ;  the  westward  pro- 
cession across  the  Atlantic  and  the  wide  American  plains 
— these  were  all  racial  movements. 

And  the  great  wars  have  been  racial  wars.  We  need 
not  go  back  of  the  last  century  for  sufficient  illustra- 
tions. The  convulsion  in  India  when  Moslem  and  Hindu 
sought  to  throw  off  the  rule  of  Great  Britain  in  the 
Sepoy  Mutiny ;  the  Taiping  Rebellion  in  China,  the  most 
colossal  single  movement  in  history,  in  which  a  Chinese 
leader  strove  to  free  his  land  from  idols,  opium  and  an 
alien  dynasty ;  the  Civil  War  in  America  in  which  a  race 
split  over  a  race;  the  Franco-Prussian,  the  China- Japan, 
and  the  Russia-Japan  wars;  and  the  struggle  between 
British  and  Boer  in  South  Africa,  were  all  racial  con- 
flicts. 

The  great  men  of  history  have  been,  so  to  speak,  racial 
men,  personalities  who  incarnated  the  racial  spirit  and 
character,  who  stood  for  its  purpose  and  distinctive  mis- 
sion, or  were  so  conceived,  and  gathered  around  them 
the  passion  and  ambition  of  the  race,  men  like  Alexander 
and  Caesar,  and  Charlemagne  and  Wolsey  and  Napoleon 
and  Cavour  and  Bismarck  and  Lincoln.  The  man  who 
has  set  himself  against  the  tide  of  nationalism  has  been 
overwhelmed  by  it,  and  those  men  have  stood  out  as  the 
great  achievers  who  have  aided  their  race  or  nation  in 
realizing  its  independence  and  developing  its  character. 

And  so  also  the  great  issues  of  the  world  have  been 
and  are  the  racial  issues.  They  are  our  great  issues  to- 
day.   Within  the  life  of  the  nation  are  three  great  prob- 


CHEISTIANITY  A:N^D  THE  EACE  PEOBLEM    67 

lems,  the  problems  of  the  negro,  and  of  the  assimilation 
of  the  immigrant,  and  of  the  inner  unity  of  the  nation  in 
social  righteousness  and  economic  justice;  and  outwardly 
our  great  questions  are  the  questions  of  right  relations 
with  the  races  of  Asia  and  with  our  neighbouring  Latin- 
American  nations.  It  can  be  truly  said  that  our  one  great 
issue  and  that  of  almost  every  other  nation  in  the  world 
is  the  race  issue.  What  is  its  right  solution?  What  are 
the  meaning  and  the  use  and  end  of  race?  How  are 
diverse  races  to  think  and  act  toward  one  another  ? 

One  answer  is  that  there  is  now,  and  is  always  to  be, 
a  continuing  racial  conflict,  that  the  chasms  between 
races  cannot  be  bridged,  and  that  across  these  chasms 
there  must  always  be  discord  and  misunderstanding  and 
war.  Between  Asia  and  Europe,  so  Mr.  Meredith  Town- 
send  argued  in  his  writings,  there  is  a  gulf  fixed  that  will 
never  close.  The  yellow  and  the  white  races  must  accept 
the  fact  of  their  mutual  intellectual  isolation  and  un- 
ending alienation.  This  is  the  view  expressed  in  the 
most  frequently  quoted  of  all  Mr.  Kipling's  lines,  which 
are  usually  dissevered  from  the  context  which  wholly 
contradicts  them, 

"  O,  East  is  East,  and  West  is  West, 

And  never  the  twain  shall  meet 

Till  earth  and  sky  stand  presently 

At  God's  great  judgment-seat." 

And  this  view  of  the  inevitable  antagonism  of  the  East 
and  the  West  other  men  extend  to  cover  all  race  re- 
lationships. They  hold  that  racial  clash  and  friction 
is  essential  to  human  progress,  that  it  is  the  divine  method 
of  world-education.  At  the  Universal  Races  Congress  in 
London  in  191 1  Dr.  von  Luschan,  professor  of  anthro- 
pology in  the  University  of  Berlin,  set  forth  this  con- 
viction : 


68       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

"  Racial  barriers,"  said  he,  "  will  never  cease  to  exist ; 
and,  if  ever  they  should  show  a  tendency  to  disappear,  it 
will  certainly  be  better  to  preserve  than  to  obliterate 
them.  The  brotherhood  of  man  is  a  good  thing,  but  the 
struggle  for  life  is  a  far  better  one.  Athens  would  never 
have  become  what  it  v/as  without  Sparta;  and  national 
jealousies  and  differences,  and  even  the  most  cruel  wars, 
have  ever  been  the  real  causes  of  progress  and  mental 
freedom.  As  long  as  man  is  not  born  with  wings,  like 
the  angels,  he  will  remain  subject  to  the  eternal  laws  of 
nature,  and  therefore  he  will  always  have  to  struggle  for 
life  and  existence.  No  Hague  Conferences,  no  Inter- 
national Tribunals,  no  international  papers  and  peace  so- 
cieties, and  no  Esperanto  or  other  international  language, 
will  ever  be  able  to  abolish  war.  The  respect  due  by  the 
white  races  to  other  races  and  by  the  white  races  to  each 
other  can  never  be  too  great,  but  natural  law  will  never 
allow  racial  barriers  to  fall,  and  even  national  boundaries 
will  never  cease  to  exist. 

'*  Nations  will  come  and  go,  but  racial  and  national 
antagonism  will  remain;  and  this  is  well,  for  mankind 
would  become  like  a  herd  of  sheep  if  we  were  to  lose  our 
national  ambition  and  cease  to  look  with  pride  and  delight, 
not  only  on  our  industries  and  science,  but  also  on  our 
splendid  soldiers  and  our  glorious  ironclads." 

This  is  one  answer  to  the  problems  of  race.  How 
abhorrent  it  is  to  the  spirit  of  Him  who  called  all  men 
brethren ! 

A  second  answer  is  that  races  exist  not  to  struggle  with 
one  another,  but  to  let  one  another  wholly  alone;  that 
each  race  has  its  own  rights  and  should  not  be  invaded 
or  interfered  with  by  other  races.  Professor  Giuseppe 
€ergi,  of  Rome,  maintained  this  view  at  the  Universal 
Races  Congress.  "What,"  asked  he,  "should  be  the 
attitude  of  one  nation  to  another,  or  toward  other  peo- 
ples with  which  it  has  relations,  in  regard  to  diversity  of 
customs,  morals,  and  religion?     The  reply  which  pre- 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  RACE  PROBLEM    69 

sents  itself  immediately  to  us  is,  not  to  attempt  any 
change,  and  to  respect  the  existing  usages  together  with 
the  sentiments  which  accompany  them,  because  one  runs 
the  risk,  from  the  resistance  which  is  made  to  chang- 
ing the  manner  of  living,  of  disturbing  good  inter- 
national relations,  of  inciting  revolt,  bloodshed,  and 
war." 

Those  who  hold  this  view  usually  apply  it  only  to  mor- 
als and  religion.  They  deem  trade  and  commerce  quite 
legitimate  intercourse,  although  the  influence  of  these  is 
enormous  in  its  effect  upon  the  life  and  thought  of  un- 
civilized peoples.  What  they  resent  is  any  effort  to 
mould  the  religions  of  the  other  peoples.  But  a  solution 
of  the  race  problem  such  as  this  is  ludicrous.  The  idea 
that  ideals  can  be  segregated,  that  races  can  be  preserved 
from  the  moral  and  social  influences  of  other  races,  is  an 
utter  delusion.  The  only  effect  of  such  a  view  is  to 
expose  the  weaker  races  to  the  exploitation  of  the  stronger 
without  reenforcing  their  moral  powers  or  guiding  them 
into  a  higher  life. 

A  third  answer  is  that  of  course  the  races  must  mingle 
and  find  their  proper  inter-relationships,  but  that  these 
consist  in  the  recognition  of  places  of  superiority  and  in- 
feriority. There  are  the  white  peoples  and  then  beneath 
them  "  the  lesser  breeds "  as  constituting  "  the  white 
man's  burden";  but,  lest  the  "burden"  should  be  too 
heavy,  the  white  man  is  to  bear  it  seated  upon  its  shoulders. 
Equality  is  the  last  word  in  the  dictionary  of  this  solu- 
tion. The  white  races  are  to  rule  the  earth,  and  the 
other  races  are  to  be  happy  in  being  ruled,  and  are  to 
carry  the  wood  and  draw  the  water  for  their  white 
masters  wearied  by  the  toil  o£  ruling  them  properly. 

A  fourth  solution  Is  the  dream  of  the  great  amalgam, 
the  intermixture  of  all  human  breeds  in  one  cosmopolite 


70       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

man.  America  is  even  now  a  blend  of  a  dozen  European 
races.  England  herself  is  the  national  offspring  of  a 
gigantic  racial  intermarriage.  The  Latin- American  peo- 
ples include  not  a  single  nation  of  pure  racial  blood. 
So,  men  say,  at  last  all  the  world  will  melt  together  into 
one  harmonized  racial  unity.  No  man  can  say  that  it 
may  not  be  so,  but  the  dream  offers  no  present  solution 
of  racial  feeling.  Such  an  end,  if  it  ever  comes,  is  cen- 
turies and  millenniums  ahead  of  us.  And  what  we  need 
is  an  answer  to  the  race  problem  that  will  answer  it  now 
and  show  us  how  to  live  before  we  die. 

Well,  there  is  such  a  solution.  "  I  have  other  sheep 
not  of  this  fold,"  said  our  Lord.  "  Them  also  I  must 
bring,  and  they  shall  hear  my  voice,  and  there  shall  be 
one  flock  and  one  shepherd."  For  Christ,  said  Paul,  is 
our  peace,  who  made  all  one,  and  broke  down  the  walls 
of  division,  that  He  might  reconcile  all  in  one  body. 
This  is  the  one  and  only  solution  of  the  race  problem. 
Humanity  is  a  unity.  It  is  one  flock.  The  sheep  may 
be  of  different  strains.  The  hues  of  their  wool  may 
vary.  But  there  is  one  Shepherd,  and  all  the  sheep  are 
His  sheep  and  one  flock  as  they  follow  Him.  Humanity 
is  an  organism  with  many  members  but  one  body.  Each 
member  is  a  race.  All  the  members  differ,  but  all  are 
one.  A  common  life  pervades  the  whole.  If  one  member 
suffers,  all  suffer  with  it.  Each  feeds  the  tissues  of  all 
the  rest.  There  is  no  schism,  no  jealousy,  no  strife  in 
the  body.  There  dare  be  none  in  humanity.  It  is  as 
irrational  that  Japan  and  the  United  States  should  be 
set  in  hostility  as  that  a  body  should  take  its  fingers  and 
tear  out  its  eyes. 

V/hatever  strength  any  race  possesses  it  possesses  not 
for  itself  but  for  all.  If  any  nation  is  not  so  strong  as 
others,  and  needs  to  be  helped,  it  should  be  helped  in  the 


OHEISTIAOTTY  AND  THE  EACE  PROBLEM    71 

spirit  of  the  Chinese  boy  who  was  carrying  a  younger 
child  on  his  back,  when  a  stranger  stopped  him  and  spoke 
pityingly  of  the  heavy  burden  he  was  bearing.  "  That  is 
not  a  burden,"  replied  the  lad ;  "  that  is  my  brother."  And 
yet  the  weaker  races  have  their  work  to  do  and  their 
contributions  to  make  to  the  full  wealth  and  glory  of 
humanity.  In  the  light  of  the  city  whose  lamp  is  the 
Lamb  all  the  races  are  to  walk,  and  men  shall  bring  the 
honour  of  all  the  races  into  it ;  but  nothing  unclean  shall 
be  there,  no  race  prejudice,  nor  the  abomination  of  pride, 
nor  the  lie  of  race-exclusion  that  will  not  allow  Slav  or 
Teuton  or  Latin  or  Japanese  its  place  in  the  flock  of 
Christ  and  the  sunlight  of  God. 

This  is  Christ's  view  of  the  race  problem.  His  solution 
was  love  and  brotherhood  and  the  recognition  by  each 
race  of  its  essential  unity  with  all  other  races.  The  sheep, 
He  said,  were  one  flock.  The  colour  of  their  fleece  made 
no  difference.  From  every  people  they  were  coming  in 
to  His  call.  They  were  not  all  of  that  Jewish  fold. 
They  are  not  all  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  or  the  European  or 
the  American  fold  to-day. 

Black  Susi  was  one  of  His  sheep.  He  was  an  African 
savage  from  Shupanga,  where  David  Livingstone's  wife 
was  buried  in  southwestern  Africa.  He  joined  Living- 
stone in  1864  as  a  w^ood-cutter  on  the  Pioneer,  when  Liv- 
ingstone was  exploring  the  Zambezi.  When  the  explorer 
organized  his  last  expedition  to  go  northwest  from  the 
Zambezi,  seeking  the  sources  of  the  Nile  and  tearing 
aside  the  veils  which  hid  the  unspeakable  atrocities  of  the 
slave-trade,  Susi  was  one  of  the  men  who  went  with 
him.  They  started  in  1866  on  their  great  journey.  In 
1870  only  three  of  the  forty-seven  men  who  started  from 
the  Zambezi  were  still  with  Livingstone,  and  Susi  was 
one  of  the  three. 


72       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

When  Stanley  came  up  into  the  interior  hunting  for 
Livingstone,  Susi  was  the  first  to  learn  of  his  approach 
and  to  go  out  to  meet  him  and  bring  his  master  word. 
When  Stanley  ^had  gone,  and  Livingstone  had  turned 
back  from  the  temptation  to  go  home  to  resume  his  task, 
Susi  clung  to  him. 

When  the  rivers  and  swamps  were  to  be  waded,  and 
Livingstone  was  racked  with  fever  and  must  be  spared 
all  avoidable  exposure,  Susi  carried  him  on  his  shoulders ; 
and,  when  the  missionary's  strength  failed,  and  he  could 
go  not  one  step  more  alone,  Susi  and  the  other  men  made 
a  litter,  and  bore  him  gently  day  by  day  until  they  came 
at  last  to  Chitambo's  village  at  Ilala.  There  they  laid 
him  quietly  down_  under  the  eaves  of  a  hut  while  Susi 
built  him  a  house  of  his  own,  into  which  they  bore  him 
to  await  the  end  which  they  saw  was  not  far  away. 
And  there  it  was  Susi  who  found  him  on  his  knees  beside 
his  bed,  where  the  old  warrior  had  passed  away  on  the 
farthest  of  all  his  journeys,  praying,  as  we  may  be  sure, 
in  the  words  which  mark  his  grave,  for  "  Heaven's  rich 
blessing  on  every  one — American,  English,  or  Turk — 
who  will  help  to  heal  the  open  sore  of  the  world." 

And  then  what  did  these  black  gentlemen  do?  They 
knew  they  had  been  the  companions  of  a  hero.  They 
knew  down  in  their  pure  hearts — who  told  them? — that 
Livingstone's  body  must  go  home ;  and,  though  they  had 
never  been  out  of  Africa  and  knew  nothing  of  the  world, 
they  decided  that  they  would  take  it  hom.e.  So  they 
buried  his  heart  under  a  great  mvula-tree  near  the  hut 
where  he  died,  embalmed  the  body,  took  it  up  on  their 
backs,  and  started  for  England  with  it.  It  was  a  nine 
months*  journey  to  Zanzibar,  through  peril,  toil,  and 
pain.  On  the  way  they  met  a  British  expedition  coming 
in  for  Livingstone. 


CHEISTIAMTY  AND  THE  EACE  PEOBLEM    73 

And  what  did  these  simple  Africans  have  to  do  but 
stand  for  what  was  chivah'ous  and  high-minded  against 
Livingstone's  own  race  ?  Susi  had  honourably  sealed  up 
all  of  Livingstone's  papers  just  as  he  left  them.  The 
men  of  Livingstone's  own  race  opened  them.  Susi  had 
carefully  packed  Livingstone's  instruments.  The  men 
of  Livingstone's  own  race  took  them  and  used  them  for 
months,  so  that  when  at  last  they  were  returned  the 
corrections  could  not  be  made  in  Livingstone's  observa- 
tions which  could  have  been  made,  had  the  instruments 
been  taken  home  and  tested  and  the  observations  checked 
accordingly.  The  black  men  were  far  and  away  the 
knightlier  souls. 

From  Zanzibar  they  accompanied  the  body  to  Aden, 
and  then  to  Southampton,  and  then  to  London ;  and  they 
stood  beside  it  as  it  was  laid  to  rest  in  the  great  nave  of 
Westminster  Abbey,  where  beside  the  record  of  the  name 
and  the  mighty  work  are  written  the  words :  "  Other 
sheep  I  have  which  are  not  of  this  fold.  Them  also  I 
must  bring,  and  they  shall  hear  my  voice." 

And  then,  not  like  white  men  who  might  have  stayed 
to  turn  their  fame  into  gain,  but  like  the  gentleman  he 
was,  Susi  went  back  to  the  Africa  which  Livingstone  had 
loved  and  died  for.  Only  a  black  Shupanga  boy,  but 
white,  clean  w^hite  inside,  and  sheep  of  Christ  as  truly 
as  any  man  of  any  race. 

"  Sheep  I  have  in  Africa,"  says  our  Lord,  "  and  sheep 
also  in  Japan.  They  also  belong  to  my  fold."  Paul 
Sawayama  was  one  of  these.  Just  before  Perry's  visit 
he  was  born  in  the  province  of  Choshu  under  the  shadow 
of  Mount  Idsumi.  As  a  boy  Sawayama  was  busy  in 
military  affairs,  rendering  brave  service  in  defending  his 
native  province  from  the  shogun's  troops.  He  was  sent 
to  the  best  teachers  in  the  province,  and  after  the  Civil 


74       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

War  gave  himself  to  study,  attending  the  most  famous 
schools  of  Japan. 

He  was  a  thoughtful,  reverent  lad,  who  was  feeling 
after  something  deeper  than  lay  upon  the  surface.  As  a 
boy  he  had  heard  a  lecture  on  the  sennin.  Sennin  was 
the  name  given  to  an  imaginary  creature,  supposed  to  be 
more  than  a  mere  man.  It  denoted  a  being  something 
like  an  angel,  who  had  been  transformed  from  a  man 
by  extraordinary  physical  and  mental  exercises. 

The  boy  was  so  impressed  by  what  he  heard  of  these 
happy  beings  that  he  aspired  to  be  one,  and  on  the  pre- 
text of  going  to  meet  a  friend  he  ascended  a  mountain, 
and  stayed  there  several  days,  hoping  to  become  a  sennin. 
When  he  got  hungry,  he  subsisted  upon  wild  fruits  or 
roots  of  plants;  and  sometimes  he  went  down  to  the 
country,  and  begged  food  from  farmers,  and  then  went 
back  to  the  mountain  again.  But  he  was  unsuccessful  in 
these  attempts;  and  he  lost  all  hope  of  becoming  a 
sennin,  and  returned  home. 

When  he  was  nineteen  years  of  age,  Sawayama  found 
his  way  to  the  bread  that  is  true  bread  and  to  the  water 
of  which  if  a  man  drinks  he  shall  not  thirst  any  more. 
Dr.  D.  C.  Greene,  the  first  missionary  of  the  American 
Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions  in  Japan, 
was  then  living  in  Kobe,  and  in  the  spring  of  1870  two  of 
the  retainers  of  the  daimio  of  Choshu  came  to  him  to 
learn  Western  habits  of  life,  that  they  might  be  prepared 
for  responsible  places  in  their  prince's  household.  After 
a  while  they  asked  permission  to  bring  with  them  a  son 
of  their  immediate  superior  in  the  service  of  the  prince; 
and,  when  permission  was  given,  they  brought  Sawayama. 

Dr.  Greene  says : 

"  He  presented  a  very  striking  appearance.     He  had 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  EACE  PEOBLEM    75 

apparenty  but  recently  recovered  from  an  attack  of 
smallpox;  and  his  hair,  which  he  wore  in  semi-foreign 
style,  had  not  yet  become  wonted  to  the  new  treatment; 
but  there  was  in  his  face  that  expression  of  mingled 
modesty  and  firmness  which  always  conspicuously  marked 
his  features.  He  took  up  the  study  of  English  with 
much  earnestness,  and  made  rapid  progress;  but  he  was 
dissatisfied. 

"  He  was  a  constant  attendant  at  our  family  worship ; 
but  we  had  no  definite  evidence  of  any  faith  in  Chris- 
tianity, though  he  seemed  to  find  pleasure  in  the  society 
of  one  or  two  other  Japanese  who  did  manifest  much 
interest.  One  of  these,  Ichikawa  Yeinosuke,  had  asked 
for  baptism.  Ichikawa,  with  his  wife,  was  arrested  in 
the  spring  of  1871  (Meiji  Yonen)  on  suspicion  of  being 
a  Christian,  and,  after  confinement  for  a  year  and  a  half, 
died  in  the  Nijo  Castle  of  Kyoto,  a  true  martyr  to  his 
faith." 

What  was  taking  place  in  Sawayama  was  concealed 
both  from  Dr.  Greene  and  from  himself;  but,  when  in 
1872  he  came  to  Northwestern  University  in  Evanston, 
111.,  and  the  great  ideas  which  had  been  sown  in  his  soul 
began  to  expand,  he  realized  that  he  was  a  Christian  and 
that  God  had  called  him  before  he  knew  it. 

After  three  years'  study  in  the  United  States  some- 
thing seemed  to  tell  him  that  his  time  was  short  and  that 
the  night  was  at  hand  when  men  cannot  work ;  and,  say- 
ing that  he  had  as  much  education  as  the  apostles  had 
when  they  were  sent  out,  he  started  back  to  Japan.  There 
he  founded  the  first  self-supporting  church  in  Japan  as 
the  pastor,  at  a  salary  of  seven  dollars  a  month,  of  a  little 
flock  of  eleven  simple  believers. 

For  two  years  his  light  burned  and  shone.  For  some 
time  before  the  end  he  lived  in  the  hospital,  sometimes 
crouched  for  days  upon  the  floor  in  agony,  only  to  rise 
and  go  out  to  preach  Christ  again.    His  worn  prayer-list 


76       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

showed  how  he  worked  even  in  his  lonely  hours.  Sor- 
row after  sorrow  rent  his  home.  But  nothing  shook  his 
dauntless  soul;  and,  though  more  than  a  generation  has 
passed  since  his  death,  his  deathless  influence  abides,  and 
the  church  in  Japan  to-day  is  what  it  is  more,  perhaps, 
by  means  of  Sawayama's  ideals  and  devotion  than  by 
those  of  any  other  man.  "  Other  sheep  I  have  not  of 
your  American  fold.     Them  also  I  must  bring.'* 

Yes,  and  they  come  to  their  shepherd  even  from  Islam. 
More  than  twenty  years  ago  I  stood  reverently  in  the 
little  mud-roofed  room  in  Khoi  in  Persia,  where  a  few 
years  before  Mirza  Ibrahim  had  been  baptized.  He  had 
been  convinced  for  some  time  of  the  truth  of  Christianity, 
and  had  asked  for  baptism.  His  poverty,  however,  and 
the  distrust  of  the  innate  duplicity  of  Persian  character 
led  to  fear  as  to  his  motives,  and  he  was  delayed.  But 
nothing  discouraged  him.  His  wife  and  friends  scoffed 
at  him ;  but  he  stood  firm,  and  after  a  year's  probation  he 
was  openly  received  and  baptized  into  the  name  of  Christ. 
Believers  and  unbelievers  were  present,  and  saw  with 
wondering  hearts  the  bold  confession.  One  of  those 
present  "  was  a  Moslem,  himself  a  half-believer,  who 
after  the  ceremony  gave  our  brother  the  right  hand  of 
congratulation,  wishing  that  he  had  like  courage  to  avow 
his  belief  in  Jesus." 

The  test  of  his  faith  came  immediately.  His  wife  and 
children  and  small  property  were  taken  from  him  by 
fanatical  Moslems;  and,  though  sick  and  feeble,  he  was 
forced  to  flee.  He  went  to  Urumia,  and  found  refuge 
in  Dr.  Cochran's  hospital. 

After  a  year  or  two  he  was  sent  out  at  his  own  re- 
quest to  carry  the  glad  tidings  of  the  Gospel  to  the  villages 
around,  with  the  small  compensation  of  four  dollars  a 
month.    With  such  fearlessness  and  vigour  did  he  pro- 


CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  EACE  PEOBLEM    77 

claim  the  way  of  life  through  Christ  alone  that  the  wrath 
of  the  enemy  was  aroused  against  him,  but  he  only  grew 
the  bolder.  Such  a  course,  however,  could  issue  in  but 
one  way.  The  arm  of  the  civil  law,  at  the  behest  of 
Mohammedan  priests,  was  laid  upon  him.  He  was  ar- 
rested and  brought  before  the  serparest,  a  sub-governor 
appointed  over  the  Christians.  When  arraigned  for  in- 
vestigation, a  crowd  of  scowling  mollahs  and  other  Mos- 
lems being  gathered  around,  the  serparest  inquired  of 
him,  "  Why  should  you,  a  Moslem,  be  teaching  the  Chris- 
tian's doctrines  ?  " 

After  his  examination  he  was  knocked  down  and  ter- 
ribly kicked,  even  by  the  serparest,  and  was  then  thrown 
into  prison,  with  a  chain  about  his  neck  and  his  feet 
fast  in  the  stocks.  So  great  was  the  uproar  in  Urumia 
that  it  was  decided  to  send  him  to  Tabriz.  A  Nestorian 
brother  of  Mirza  Ibrahim  in  heralding  the  cross  among 
Mohammedan  villages  v/ent  to  bid  him  good-bye  on  the 
day  he  was  to  start  for  Tabriz.  He  found  him  tying  his 
clothing  in  a  handkerchief,  ready  to  go.  Turning  to  his 
fellow  prisoners,  he  said :  "  I  have  shown  to  you  Christ, 
the  all-sufficient  Saviour;  you  have  learned  truth  enough 
to  save  your  souls  if  you  only  receive  it."  He  bade  them 
a  tender  farewell,  and  they  all  arose,  with  heavy  fetters 
on  hands  and  feet,  and  chains  upon  their  necks,  and  bade 
him  go  in  peace,  tears  streaming  down  the  wretched  faces 
of  many  of  them. 

An  extra  supply  of  provisions  sent  him  by  his  Christian 
friends  being  left  over,  the  soldiers  suggested  that  he 
take  it  with  him  for  his  journey's  needs ;  but  he  answered, 
"  No,  I  have  a  Master  who  will  provide  for  me ;  I  will 
leave  this  bread  for  the  poor  prisoners  here."  As  he  left 
the  prison,  he  turned  and,  raising  his  hand,  solemnly 
called  God  to  witness  that,  if  on  the  judgment-day  he 


i 


78       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

should  meet  any  of  these  souls  unsaved,  he  had  declared 
to  them  the  way  of  life,  and  that  he  was  free  from  their 
blood. 

In  Tabriz  he  was  cast  into  a  mouldy  cellar  and  chained 
to  a  gang  of  murderers,  who  robbed  him  of  his  coat  and 
bedding.  Even  these  he  tried  to  win  to  Christ.  "  One 
night,"  says  Dr.  Labaree,  "  after  they  had  been  locked 
up  for  the  night,  the  prison  inmates  had  been  talking  of 
the  two  religions  of  Jesus  and  Mohammed.  His  fellow 
prisoners  declared  to  Ibrahim  that,  if  he  did  not  say 
that  Jesus  was  false  and  Ali  (one  of  their  mediators) 
true,  they  would  choke  him  to  death.  By  turn  each  of 
the  base  fellows  put  him  to  the  test,  and  each  time  his 
answer  came  back,  '  Jesus  is  true ;  choke  me  if  you  will.' 
And  they  did  so,  one  after  the  other,  until  his  eyes  bulged 
out  and  for  minutes  he  lost  consciousness.  They  de- 
sisted without  actually  taking  his  life  on  the  spot;  but 
as  a  consequence  of  their  brutal  treatment  his  throat  so 
swelled  as  to  prevent  his  eating  his  dry  prison  fare,  and 
he  became  weaker  and  weaker." 

His  condition  touched  even  his  keeper,  and  he  was 
moved  to  the  upper  prison.  But  it  was  too  late,  and  on 
Sunday,  May  14,  1893,  he  died  from  his  injuries.  When 
the  Crown  Prince  was  informed  of  his  death,  he  asked, 
"  How  did  he  die?  "  And  the  jailer  answered,  "  He  died 
like  a  Christian." 

"  He  through  fiery  trials  trod, 

And  from  great  affliction  came; 
Now  before  the  throne  of  God, 

Sealed  with  His  almighty  name, 
Clad  in  raiment  pure  and  white, 

Victor  palms  within  his  hands. 
Through  his  dear  Redeemer's  might 

More  than  conqueror  he  stands." 

"  Other  sheep  I  have  not  of  your  fold.  Them  also  I 
bring," 


CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  RACE  PEOBLEM    79 

Do  we  welcome  them  ?  Or  does  it  irritate  us  to  be  told 
these  things?  Are  we  glad  that  all  the  children  of  men 
are  God's  children,  or  do  we  want  to  shut  some  of  them 
— Slavs,  Teutons,  Latins,  Asiatics,  Africans — out  of  the 
sunshine  of  God?  Well,  whatever  our  likes  or  dislikes  in 
the  matter,  God  is  no  respecter  of  races;  and  He  takes 
them  all  in,  and  the  flock  of  Christ  contains  sheep  of 
every  name  and  nation. 

To  gather  in  these  sheep  one  by  one  is  a  true  and  suffi- 
cient Christian  work  of  itself.  The  eifort  to  bring  them 
in  and  the  implication  and  conviction  which  underlie 
the  missionary  enterprise  and  sustain  its  motives  involve 
the  true  and  Christian  view  of  the  race  problem.  They 
do  more  than  this.  They  make  the  greatest  possible 
contribution  to  the  solution  of  the  problem.  The  spread 
of  Christianity  is  the  one  solid  hope  of  unifying  man- 
kind. No  other  religion  is  capable  of  universality  with- 
out an  essential  modification  of  its  character.  Christian- 
ity is  only  true  to  its  character  when  conceived  as  the 
one  universal  faith.  As  we  spread  it  throughout  the 
world  and  gather  the  sheep  into  one  flock  we  unite  the 
races  in  the  family  of  God. 

This  fusing  influence  of  religion  has  been  often  dis- 
puted. The  sight  of  a  divided  Christendom  for  four 
years  seemed  to  discredit  it.  But  in  reality  the  war  saw 
the  most  comprehensive  and  world-wide  alliance  ever 
seen  in  history  and  it  was  an  alliance  in  behalf  of  funda- 
mental Christian  principles  of  freedom  and  duty.  There 
was  no  disproof  of  the  principle  which  Lyall  states  in 
"Asiatic  Studies": 

"  It  is  impossible  not  to  admit  that  in  many  instances 
the  successful  propagation  of  a  superior  or  stronger 
creed  has  been  favourable  to  political  amalgamation,  nor 
can  there  be  any  doubt  of  the  intense  fusing  power  that 


80       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

belongs  to  a  common  religion.  In  our  day,  the  decree  of 
divorce  between  religion  and  politics  has  been  made  ab- 
solute by  the  judgment  of  every  statesman,  above  all  for 
Christian  rulers  in  non-Christian  countries ;  nevertheless, 
the  religion  of  the  Spaniards  was  a  part  of  their  policy  in 
the  New  World,  and  this  of  course  is  still  true  in  re- 
gard to  Mohammedans  everywhere.  There  have  been 
many  periods,  and  there  are  still  many  countries,  in 
which  an  army  composed  of  different  religious  sects 
could  hardly  hold  together.  And  it  is  certain  that  for 
ages  identity  of  religious  belief  has  been,  and  still  is  in 
many  parts  of  the  world,  one  of  the  strongest  guarantees 
of  combined  action  on  the  battle-field.  It  has  often 
shown  itself  far  more  effective,  as  a  bond  of  union,  than 
territorial  patriotism;  it  has  even  surmounted  tribal  or 
racial  antipathies;  and  its  advantages  as  a  palliative  of 
foreign  ascendancy  have  been  indisputable.  The  atti- 
tude of  religious  neutrality  is  now  manifestly  and  incon- 
testably  incumbent  on  all  civilized  rulerships  over  an 
alien  people;  it  is  a  principle  that  is  just,  right  and  politic; 
but  there  is  nothing  in  its  influence  that  makes  for  that 
kind  of  assimilation  which  broadens  the  base  of  dominion. 
Religion  the  world  over,  especialty  in  Asia,  and  their  in- 
fluence for  or  against  political  consolidation  has  lost  very 
little  of  its  efficiency  anywhere." 

With  regard  to  the  Oriental  problems,  accordingly,  that 
is,  the  problem  of  the  relations  of  the  Western  and  the 
Eastern  races,  the  Christian  Church  has  two  great  duties : 
One  is  to  evangelize  the  Oriental  nations ;  the  other  is  to 
Christianize  the  relations  sustained  to  these  nations  by 
the  nations  which  are  called  Christian.  These  two  duties 
are  inseparable.  If  we  desire  our  relationships  to  the 
Oriental  nations  to  be  right  and  happy  relationships,  they 
must  rest  on  those  unities  which  spring  from  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  Just  so  truly  as  it  is  impossible  to  bind  any 
single  nation  together  in  a  lasting  and  organic  oneness 
part  Christian  and  part  un-Christian,  so  it  will  be  im- 


CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  EACE  PEOBLEM     81 

possible  on  that  basis  to  unify  mankind.  We  take  this 
duty  for  granted.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Church 
has  set  herself  to  its  discharge  with  a  greater  earnestness 
and  power  than  characterizes  her  efforts  to  deal  with  the 
second  of  these  tasks. 

In  the  same  way  the  second  duty  is  inseparable  from 
the  first.  It  is  impossible  for  the  Church  to  evangelize 
the  non-Christian  world  so  long  as  its  direct  testimony  is 
contradicted  or  compromised  by  the  influences  which  ac- 
company it.  I  recall  a  passage  from  an  address  by  Lord 
Salisbury  made  in  the  year  1900  in  London  at  the  bi- 
centenary of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel,  in  which  he  recognized  the  changed  conditions 
brought  about  by  the  political  and  commercial  changes  of 
the  world  in  making  infinitely  more  difficult  the  task  of 
Christianizing  the  non-Christian  peoples  : 

"  In  the  Church  of  old  times,  great  evangelists  went 
forth  to  this  work,  exposed  themselves  to  fearful  dangers 
and  suffered  all  the  terrors  that  the  world  could  inflict 
in  support  of  the  doctrine  v/hich  they  preached  and  the 
morality  which  they  practiced.  There  was  no  doubt  at 
the  same  time,  a  corrupt  society  calling  itself  by  their 
name.  But  .  .  .  the  means  of  communication  were 
not  active  and  were  not  as  they  are  now,  and  things 
might  go  on  without  attracting  the  attention  of  those 
who  listened  to  the  teaching  of  the  earlier  teachers  or 
diminishing  the  value  of  their  work.  Now  things  are 
considerably  altered,  and  that  very  increase  in  the  means 
of  communication,  that  very  augmentation  of  the  power 
of  opinion  to  affect  opinion  and  of  man  to  affect  man  by 
the  mere  conquests  we  have  achieved  in  the  material  do- 
main; those  very  conquests,  while  undoubtedly  they  are 
.  .  .  an  invitation  from  Providence  to  take  advantage 
of  the  means  of  spreading  the  Gospel,  are  also  a  means 
by  which  the  lives  of  many  and  the  acts  of  many,  which 
are  not  wholly  consistent  with  the  ideal  which  is  preached 


82       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

in  the  pulpit  or  read  in  the  Holy  Book,  are  brought  home 
to  the  vast  nations  which  we  seek  to  address.  That  is 
one  of  the  great  difficulties  with  which  we  have  to  con- 
tend, and  that  is  the  reason  why  this  society  and  all 
missionary  societies  appeal  with  undoubted  force  and 
with  the  right  to  have  their  appeal  considered — that  as 
our  civilization  in  its  measure  tends  to  hamper  missionary 
efforts,  so  in  its  nobler  manifestations  and  its  more  power- 
ful efforts  that  civilization,  represented  by  our  assistance, 
shall  push  forward  to  its  ultimate  victory,  the  cause  to 
which  you  are  devoted." 

We  are  bound  to  do  our  best  to  diminish  these  diffi- 
culties by  removing  their  cause,  if  we  are  ever  going  to 
complete  our  missionary  undertaking  abroad  and  find 
peace  and  tranquillity  at  home.  But  we  must  make  our 
national  relations  Christian  also  just  because  they  must 
be  right.  Until  those  relationships  are  made  Christian 
they  are  not  right.  And  simply  because  we  must  have 
right  relations  with  the  Eastern  nations  the  churches  are 
bound  to  help  in  the  problem  of  making  them  right  by 
Christianizing  them. 

There  are  a  great  many  things  that  the  Church  can 
do  in  the  discharge  of  this  duty.  I  wish  to  pick  out 
only  one  of  these  things  now,  namely,  that  the  Church 
should  herself  hold  and  should  constantly  advocate  the 
great  ideas  which  must  be  generally  accepted  if  our  re- 
lationships to  the  Oriental  nations  are  to  be  peaceful  and 
satisfactory.  Nothing  else  is  more  important  or  more 
practical.  Everything  depends  on  the  ideas  which  we 
hold  or  reject  in  this  matter  of  racial  attitude.  We  can- 
not reap  right  relationships  out  of  false  conceptions,  and 
until  we  get  our  principles  of  relationship  right  between 
ourselves  and  the  Eastern  world  it  is  vain  for  us  to  think 
that  we  can  make  our  policies  right. 

I  should  like  to  speak  of  simply  four  or  five  of  these 


CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  EACE  PEOBLEM    83 

ideas  which  the  Church  should  hold  and  assert  in  the 
matter  of  our  relations  to  the  Oriental  nations. 

In  the  first  place,  we  should  steadfastly  hold  to  the  con- 
viction that  enduring  peace  between  the  Oriental  nations 
is  not  contrary  to  nature  or  to  the  will  of  God.  There 
are  some  who  hold  that  it  is.  Or  if  they  allow  God  a 
little  benevolence  they  hold  that  nature  is  stronger  than 
He  and  able  to  overrule  any  good-will  He  may  have. 
They  set  up  a  new  and  stronger  God  whom  they  call  the 
logic  of  history.  I  am  not  exaggerating.  Let  me  read 
the  words  of  a  leader  in  Congress  in  regard  to  Japan  and 
the  Philippine  Islands :  "  I  have  no  doubt  that  a  con- 
flict will  come  between  the  Far  East  and  the  Far  West 
across  the  Pacific  Ocean.  All  that  is  taking  place  in  the 
world,  the  logic  of  the  history  of  the  human  race  up  to 
now,  teaches  us  that  the  avoidance  of  this  conflict  is  im- 
possible. I  hope  it  will  be  only  a  commercial  conflict. 
I  hope  war  may  not  come,  but  I  have  little  faith  in  this 
world  of  ours  that  people  and  races  are  able  to  meet  in 
competition  for  a  long  period  of  time  without  armed  con- 
flict. A  fight  for  commercial  supremacy  leads  in  the 
end  to  a  fight  with  arms,  because  that  is  the  final  arbiter 
between  nations,"  I  say  nothing  about  the  speaker  of 
these  words,  but  I  say  that  words  like  these  are  weak 
and  wicked.  They  are  weak  because  they  assume  the 
necessary  surrender  of  actors  to  their  own  acts,  and  they 
are  wicked  because  they  bring  on  the  very  situation 
which  they  profess  to  deplore.  The  principles  which 
they  embody  the  Christian  Church  must  unflinchingly 
repudiate,  and  assert  instead  an  absolutely  contradictory 
doctrine,  the  doctrine  that  pacific  relations  between  our- 
selves and  the  Orient  are  possible  and  obligatory. 

In  the  second  place,  we  must  stand  for  the  duty  and 
the  possibility  of  the  development  of  genuine  international 


84       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

sympathy  and  love  between  ourselves  and  the  Oriental 
peoples.  We  have  listened  entirely  too  long  to  nonsense 
regarding  chasms  run  across  humanity  that  can  never  be 
bridged.  There  are  no  such  chasms.  We  must  believe 
that  it  is  entirely  possible  to  establish  relationships  of 
genuine  international  good-will  and  affection  between  our- 
selves and  the  Oriental  peoples.  Alas,  they  do  not  exist. 
For  a  long  period  of  time  they  did  exist  between  us  and 
Japan,  but  they  have  been  slowly  fading  away.  They 
exist  in  some  measure  between  ourselves  and  China,  but 
these,  too,  may  die  away.  They  do  not  exist  between  us 
and  the  other  nations  of  the  West.  Nothing  makes  a 
man  sadder  than  to  find  all  through  Latin-America  fear 
and  distrust  with  regard  to  us.  Such  inter-racial  sus- 
picion destroys  national  influence.  As  one  travels  over 
the  northeast  corner  of  Asia  he  feels  how  infinitely 
Japan's  influence  might  be  increased  if  only  she  could  in 
some  way  win  China's  trust  and  esteem.  It  can  be  done, 
as  we  can  win  the  confidence  and  love  of  Latin-America. 
We  have  to  believe  that  nations  can  love  one  another  even 
across  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  Christian  Church  must  set 
herself  to  lead  in  that  affection,  and  we  must  not  content 
ourselves  with  projecting  the  task  into  the  distant  future 
or  thinking  of  it  as  beyond  the  level  of  our  immediate 
and  practical  duty.  It  is  close  at  hand  at  this  moment. 
Japan  threw  away  her  opportunity  to  bind  China  to 
herself.  For  years  from  5,000  to  15,000  students  from 
China  whom  she  might  have  v/on  for  herself  were  study- 
ing in  the  institutions  of  Japan  and  went  back  to  China 
with  bitter  anti- Japanese  hate.  Great  Britain  has  had 
her  opportunity  for  a  generation  with  Indian  students. 
So  far  from  making  every  one  of  those  men  a  bond  of 
loyalty  and  good-will,  they  have  constituted  for  her  a 
great  angry  mass  of  disaffections.     There  are  over  one 


CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  RACE  PROBLEM    85 

thousand  Latin-American  students  in  our  own  universi- 
ties, with  hundreds  of  men  from  the  schools  of  Asia, 
and  we  have  our  chance  to  estabhsh  relationships  of  racial 
affection  by  winning  now  the  good-will  and  gratitude  of 
this  responsive  life  in  the  midst  of  our  own  land. 

In  the  third  place,  we  must  stand  for  the  right  and, 
one  may  go  further,  for  the  duty  of  national  personality 
on  the  part  of  these  Oriental  neighbours.  God  made  each 
of  these  races,  and  we  must  believe  that  He  had  some 
great  and  benevolent  purpose  in  making  them  different. 
Have  they  not  the  same  rights  as  we  to  a  sense  of  racial 
character  and  mission?  Is  humanity  not  to  be  richer  for 
its  variety?  The  very  wealth  of  humanity  is  to  consist 
in  the  fulfillment  by  each  people  of  its  own  duty  and 
destiny.  All  are  in  God's  will.  We  have  no  right  to 
assert  that  there  is  a  superior  and  inferior  between  races 
as  races.  Some  races  may  be  inferior  in  some  quality; 
others  in  qualities  of  different  kinds.  No  single  race 
can  be  picked  out  as  absolutely  superior  in  itself.  The 
only  sufficiency  is  of  the  whole.  All  mankind  must  fit 
into  one  unity  of  racial  completeness.  Our  great  danger 
to-day  is  that  we  shall  break  down  in  the  Oriental  peo- 
ples themselves  their  own  sense  of  national  confidence. 
And  what  can  you  do  with  a  man  whose  self-respect  has 
been  shattered?  A  great  part  of  our  contact  with  the 
Oriental  world  the  last  hundred  years  has  had  this  re- 
sult. It  has  slowly  undermined  the  confidence  of  the 
Oriental  races  and  their  hope  in  God  for  themselves. 
And  we  seem  to  take  pride  in  this  and  resent  in  Japan  her 
successful  resistance  to  It.  She  is  the  one  Oriental  na- 
tion which  has  learned  our  secrets  and  preserved  her 
own  national  life.  This  is  a  thing  to  rejoice  in.  We 
must  believe  that  God  had  a  wise  purpose  in  letting  man- 
kind divide  itself  into  the  races  that  they  might  bring 


86       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

back  again  a  richer  treasure  into  the  wealth  of  the  whole 
family  of  God.  The  Church  must  hold  this  larger  racial 
sympathy  and  preach  a  true  doctrine  of  humanity. 

In  the  fourth  place,  we  must  stand  steadfastly  for  the 
highest  fairness  of  national  judgment.  We  have  not  ex- 
ercised such  judgment  and  we  are  not  doing  it  to-day. 
We  are  full  of  racial  bigotry  and  unequal  judgment.  It 
is  as  much  as  a  man's  good  name  is  worth  in  some  Chris- 
tian communities  in  Asia  or  Europe  to  say  a  good  word 
for  Japan  or  to  express  any  trust  whatever  in  the  good 
faith  of  Japan.  And  in  the  same  way  there  are  people  in 
every  land  in  South  America  who  deride  the  idea  of  the 
integrity  and  honour  of  the  United  States.  When  it  comes 
to  looking  across  the  chasm  of  race  men  do  not  see  other 
races  as  they  see  themselves.  We  err  in  two  ways  to-day 
in  our  national  judgments.  First  by  generalizing  races. 
But  racial  character  of  purpose  cannot  be  generalized  in 
any  accurate  or  trustworthy  way.  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson 
is  very  clever  in  attempting  it  for  India  and  China  and 
Japan,  and  some  of  us  applaud  and  approve,  but  if  we 
think  he  has  done  it  justly  let  us  examine  his  generaliza- 
tion of  American  character  and  see  whether  we  are  will- 
ing to  accept  his  judgment  of  our  own  national  person- 
ality. A  whole  race  cannot  be  unitized  under  any  com- 
mon character  label.  Each  race  is  a  composite  of  good 
and  bad,  sincere  and  unworthy.  Contradictory  streams 
run  through  it.  It  is  a  maelstrom,  not  a  current.  It  can 
only  be  judged  as  a  medley.  And  our  own  is  like  all  the 
others,  and  all  the  others  are  like  our  own.  In  the  second 
place,  we  apply  to  ourselves  one  set  of  standards  and  to 
the  Orient  another  set.  We  see  ourselves  through  an 
apotheosis,  but  Asia  we  judge  without  allowance  by 
idealistic  principles  before  which  we  ourselves  cannot 
stand.    As  we  judge  our  own  conduct,  so  we  must  judge 


CHEISTIANITY  AND  THE  EACE  PEOBLEM    87 

their  conduct.  Our  larger  knowledge  does  not  entitle  us 
to  a  laxer  obligation.  Superior  theology  is  no  excuse  for 
inferior  morality.  If  we  have  a  clearer  viev/  of  God  than 
the  Oriental  nations,  then  we  must  judge  ourselves  by 
stricter  standards  than  we  apply  to  them. 

Lastly,  it  is  our  duty  to  hold  fast  to  the  creative  prin- 
ciple of  trust  in  our  attitude  to  the  Orient.  We  only 
help  men  by  believing  in  them.  We  make  our  neighbour- 
hood better  by  believing  in  its  best.  This  was  the  great 
principle  of  the  Incarnation.  It  was  God  trusting  Him- 
self to  untrustworthy  man  and  making  man  worthy  by 
the  creative  power  of  His  trust  and  love.  When  the 
Taiping  Rebellion  was  over  Chinese  Gordon's  body-guard 
was  made  up  of  ex-rebels,  whom  he  had  taken  and  made 
trustworthy  men  by  the  redemptive  power  of  his  trust 
in  them.  In  "  Latin- America — Its  Rise  and  Develop- 
ment," the  best  book  we  have  on  Latin- America  from  the 
Latin-American  point  of  view,  Garcia  Calderon  describes 
the  United  States  as  "  The  North  American  Peril "  to 
Latin-America.  Much  that  he  says  we  cannot  say  is 
untrue.  But  it  is  the  possibility  of  the  worst  in  us.  And 
men  are  writing  on  Japan  to-day  with  blind  eyes  and  a 
hard  heart  who  see  only  the  exaggeration  of  the  possible 
worst.  Such  thinking  and  speaking  only  produces  the 
very  badness  which  it  wants  to  see.  But  we  help  each 
nation  and  mankind,  not  by  parading  the  worst,  but  by 
holding  each  nation  to  its  best.  Surely  if  there  is  one 
body  in  the  world  that  has  such  a  duty  to  the  Oriental 
nations  that  body  is  the  Christian  Church.  To  think  un- 
flinchingly of  the  things  that  are  true,  and  with  the  things 
that  are  true  to  see  and  rejoice  in  the  things  that  are 
lovely — there  are  other  duties  beside  these.  But  surely 
the  Church  has  no  more  important  duty  than  to  think 
with  the  truth  that  is  love  regarding  the  Oriental  na- 


88       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

tions  and  the  problems  of  our  relationship  to  them.  Let  us 
speak  that  truth  across  this  nation,  and  everything  that 
is  contradictory  to  that  truth  call  a  lie.  Otherwise  we 
shall  sow  and  reap  only  bitterness  and  sorrow— bitter- 
ness and  sorrow  that  will  grow  with  the  years  if  we 
cannot,  side  by  side  with  our  work  of  evangelization, 
Christianize  our  political  and  economic  relationships  with 
the  peoples  of  the  Orient, 


IV 

FOREIGN  MISSIONS  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTER- 
PRETATION OF  CHRISTIAN  PRINCIPLES 

HUMANITY  is  now  engaged  in  the  effort  to  re- 
construct out  of  the  ruins  of  the  war  a  new 
and  better  world.  This  new  effort  will  be  as 
futile  as  all  that  went  before  unless  humanity  accepts  the 
ideals  and  the  energies  of  the  Christian  faith.  Where  can 
it  find  these  principles  in  operation  on  human  life?  In 
foreign  missions.  In  our  search  for  the  essential  and  con- 
structive principles  of  Christianity,  we  can  get  more 
help  from  Christian  missions  than  from  any  other  source. 
Larger  knowledge  comes  from  larger  life.  Christian 
theism  we  ov/e  to  the  Incarnation,  and  the  Pauline  Gos- 
pel to  the  Pauline  propaganda.  The  bounds  of  human 
knowledge  are  pushed  out  by  action,  even  as  our  Lord 
said  of  His  own  supreme  revelation,  "  The  words  that 
I  say  unto  you  I  speak  not  from  myself ;  but  the  Father 
abiding  in  me  doeth  His  works."  And  no  action  illus- 
trates or  reinterprets  more  luminously  the  true  char- 
acter of  Christianity  and  its  bearing  on  the  most  press- 
ing problems  of  the  modern  world  than  the  spontaneous 
action  of  the  Christian  spirit  in  foreign  missions. 

Let  us  clear  the  air  at  once  of  all  false  issues  by  the 
fullest  acknowledgment  of  frailties  and  failures  in  the 
agents  of  missions,  of  mistakes  in  policies  and  methods, 
of  the  imperfect  grasp  and  application  even  of  true  prin- 

89 


90       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

ciples,  of  inadequate  apprehension  on  the  part  of  the 
missionary  movement  of  its  own  true  character  and  goals. 
When  everything  has  been  allowed  that  needs  to  be 
allowed  on  these  counts,  it  remains  true  that  foreign 
missions  are  the  most  efficient  movement  in  human 
history.  And  what  is  of  more  consequence,  and  is  here 
to  be  set  forth,  foreign  missions  embody  the  elements  of 
Christianity  which  are  essential  to  its  life  and  to  the 
recovery  of  its  unity  and  the  principles  which  alone  can 
solve  the  problems  confronting  the  modern  world.  These 
are  ambitious  claims,  but  after  all,  they  are  claims  not 
for  foreign  missions,  but  for  Christianity,  and  for  foreign 
missions  only  because  foreign  missions  are  the  present 
expression  of  the  primitive  Christian  spirit  fresh  from 
its  first  contact  with  God  in  Christ. 

To  go  straight  to  the  heart  of  the  matter,  foreign 
missions  are  the  purest  embodiment  of  the  spirit  of  ab- 
solute loyalty  to  duty  and  of  utterly  unselfish  love.  And 
these  are  the  two  highest  characteristics  of  the  life  of  our 
Lord,  and  therefore  of  the  Christian  mind.  They  were 
the  two  commandments  of  the  Law  when  the  Law  had 
passed  through  the  alembic  of  His  soul  who  fulfilled  it. 
They  were  the  emphatic  notes  of  His  own  doctrine. 
"  We  must  work  the  works  of  Him  that  sent  me  while 
it  is  day:  the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can  work." 
"  He  that  hath  my  commandments  and  keepeth  them,  he 
it  is  that  loveth  me."  I  am  not  saying  that  other  enter- 
prises are  not  carried  forward  in  duty  and  love.  I  am 
saying  that  the  foreign  missionary  idea  is  the  purest  em- 
bodiment of  these  conceptions,  and  that  it  and  all  Chris- 
tian activities  can  be  powerful  with  the  full  strength  of 
Christianity  only  in  proportion  as  these  are  their  abso- 
lutely controlling  conceptions. 

The  foreign  missionary  movement  from  the  beginning 


A  CONSTEUCTIYE  INTEEPEETATION        91 

has  stood  solidly  and  unflinchingly  upon  the  idea  of  duty. 
It  has  believed  in  authority  and  has  incarnated  obedience. 
Lord  Curzon  has  spoken  slightingly  of  it  as  resting  upon 
a  solitary  command  of  Christ  of  questionable  authenticity. 
We  may  dispute  the  form  of  his  cavil  but  freely  concede 
its  substance.  The  enterprise  has  rested  on  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  absoluteness  and  authority  of  Christ  and  of 
the  work  v^hich  He  did,  and  has  conceived  that  in  His 
Lordship,  v^hich  embraces  nobody  unless  it  embraces 
everybody,  there  is  a  sanction  of  the  duty  of  a  world 
propaganda  which  stamps  as  ethically  anomalous  the 
man  who  professes  the  Christian  faith  and  does  not  seek 
to  discharge  the  missionary  duty,  who  answers  the  de- 
scription and  arraignment  of  Christ,  "  Why  call  ye  me 
Lord,  Lord,  and  do  not  the  things  which  I  say  ?  "  Will- 
iam Carey  would  not  have  adhered  to  his  purpose 
through  all  the  indifference  and  opposition  which  he  met 
at  home,  and  he  would  not  have  wrought  for  forty  years 
with  never  a  furlough  amid  difficulties,  which  we  can 
verbally  describe  but  cannot  vitally  conceive,  in  India; 
Robert  Morrison  would  not  have  toiled  for  seven  years 
without  visible  result  in  Canton,  and  Stephen  Bush  and 
Stephen  Mattoon  for  six  years  in  Bangkok;  the  Chris- 
tians of  Uganda  would  not  have  smiled  at  the  fires  of  a 
thousand  martyrdoms  and  the  Christians  of  China  at  the 
sharp  swords  which  slew  their  thirty  thousand  in  the 
year  of  grace  1900,  if  it  had  not  been  for  that  iron  clutch 
of  duty  which  has  made  the  missionary  enterprise  not 
contemptuous  but  indifferent  toward  all  that  opposes  it 
before  or  behind.  "We  do  not  endure  hardship,"  said 
Donald  Hankey  of  his  fellow  soldiers.  "  We  deride  it." 
The  missionary  enterprise  has  been  a  movement  of 
voluntary  loyalty  to  duty,  not  the  loyalty  of  conscription 
or  irrevocable  enlistment  or  military  discipline,  but  free 


92       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

and  avoidable.  And  this  hard  and  unyielding  fidelity 
to  what  ought  to  be  done,  no  matter  what  is  said  or  met, 
Gi*  how  fruitless  or  impossible  the  task,  is  our  great  need 
in  all  the  work  of  the  Church  and  the  Kingdom.  The 
missionary  enterprise  teaches  us  to  ask  simply,  "  What 
is  right  ?  What  ought  to  be  done  ?  "  and  when  we  have 
our  answer,  to  do  it  steadfastly,  immovably,  in  the  con- 
fidence of  St.  Paul's  assurance  regarding  the  outcome  of 
all  work  so  done.  In  the  patience  of  duty  which  we 
learn  from  it,  v/e  can  wait  as  long  as  we  need  to  wait  to 
achieve  whatever  is  right  in  the  mission  or  character  of 
the  Christian  Church  and  in  the  advancement  of  the 
world. 

Foreign  missions  embody,  also,  the  perpetuated  spirit 
of  the  Incarnation.  They  represent  the  voluntary  sur- 
render of  privilege  in  the  interest  of  purely  unselfish 
service.  Those  who  labour  in  the  missionary  enterprise 
are  not  salaried,  they  are  merely  sustained.  There  is 
neither  employment  nor  wage.  There  is  simply  life  given 
for  work.  And  no  motive  of  gain  or  interest  attaches 
to  the  work.  It  can  be  shown  undoubtedly  that  Christian 
missions  produce  peace  and  create  trade  and  advance 
prosperity.  All  this  is  the  world's  gain,  but  it  does  not 
accrue  as  payment  to  the  man  who  produces  it,  and  no 
missionaries  go  out  because  it  can  be  shown  that  their 
work  is  full  of  material  blessing  to  mankind  and  is  eco- 
nomically and  politically  profitable  to  the  nations  from 
which  they  go.  If  such  motives  ever  found  their  way 
into  the  movement  they  would  be  its  death.  Even  the 
legitimate  considerations  of  patriotism  which  support  so 
much  of  our  appeal  for  the  work  of  the  Church  at  home 
do  not  enter  here.  The  enterprise  is  itself  only  when 
it  is  absolutely  unselfish,  when  with  no  weapon  but  love, 
with  no  purpose  except  the  purpose  of  doing  good  and 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATION        93 

giving  life,  with  no  agency  except  the  truth,  with  no  con- 
ception of  interest  or  of  return  or  of  glory  or  of  pride, 
it  goes  forth  to  meet  men  as  naked  and  unaccoutred  jn 
their  need  as  it  is  in  its  supply.  Doubtless  often  tl^ 
pure  ideal  of  the  missionary  eifort  has  been  clouded.  It 
has  taken  other  tools  and  implements  into  its  hands  and 
has  still  produced  results.  Nevertheless  its  best  fruit- 
age has  come  from  its  purest  fidelity  to  a  principle 
of  utterly  unselfish  love  and  unaccessoried  truth.  But 
each  age  misreads  history  or  forgets  it  under  the  allure- 
ments of  its  own  temptations  and  we  constantly  need  to 
be  reminded,  to  quote  Macaulay's  words  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  "  that  falsehood,  though  no  match  for  truth 
alone,  has  often  been  found  more  than  a  match  for  truth 
and  power  together,"  and  that  the  temptation  of  our 
Lord  was  a  temptation  to  use  His  unprecedented  and 
unequalled  resources  to  achieve  good  ends  by  means 
unequal  in  goodness,  to  mingle  interest  with  self-forget- 
fulness,  to  build  a  golden  kingdom  on  foundations  of 
clay. 

We  have  come  nearest  to  escaping  such  errors  in  the 
most  unselfish  work  which  the  Church  is  doing,  the  work 
of  expatriating  her  children,  of  passing  the  best  of  them 
through  a  real  kenosis,  of  giving  where  there  is  no  claim 
and  whence  there  can  be  no  return.  And  the  power  of 
the  work  has  been  in  proportion  to  its  unselfishness, 
that  is,  to  its  pure  reliance  upon  love  as  its  support,  its 
agency  and  its  only  reward.  Against  all  the  derision  of 
the  world  the  method  and  principle  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  of  the  self-devotion  of  the  Incarnation,  are  the 
triumphant  forms  of  action,  and  the  success  of  the 
Church  everywhere  awaits  their  adoption,  freed  from 
every  alliance  with  power  and  every  confusion  with 
interest. 


94       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

It  is  in  this  matter  of  unselfish  service  that  the  mission- 
ary principle  sets  for  our  modern  international  intercourse 
its  indispensable  lesson.  "  The  history  of  nations/'  wrote 
Mr.  Gladstone  in  1876,  "  is  a  melancholy  chapter;  that  is, 
the  history  of  governments  is  one  of  the  most  immoral 
parts  of  human  history."  We  of  the  West  surely  cannot 
complain  if  the  East  and  the  South,  whom  our  superior 
political  power  has  exploited — with  rare  exceptions  of 
trusteeship  and  those  trusteeships  maintained  by  power 
— look  upon  us  with  dislike  and  resentment.  What  na- 
tions to-day  are  viewing  China  with  truly  disinterested 
good-will,  anxious  only  that  China  should  be  strong  and 
free  and  that  China's  interest  should  be  first  and  most 
fully  secured?  How  revolutionary  the  missionary  prin- 
ciple would  be  in  international  politics!  Lacking  the 
principle  in  politics  and  business,  Mr.  William  B.  Reed, 
when  he  was  American  Minister  to  China,  rejoiced  that 
at  least  it  was  found  in  the  missionary  body.  "  Having 
no  enthusiasm  on  the  subject,"  he  wrote  to  the  Secretary 
of  State,  "  I  am  bound  to  say  that  I  consider  the  mis- 
sionary  element  in  China  a  great  conservative  and  pro- 
tecting principle.  It  is  the  only  barrier  between  the  un- 
hesitating advance  of  commercial  adventure  and  the  not 
incongruous  element  of  Chinese  imbecile  corruption." 

The  service  of  the  missionary  enterprise  in  this  regard 
is  varied,  and  it  is  indispensable  to  the  neighbourliness 
of  mankind.  The  missionaries  make  the  East  and  West, 
the  North  and  South,  acquainted  with  one  another. 
"  The  great  agency  to-day  in  keeping  us  advised  of  the 
conditions  among  Oriental  races,"  said  Mr.  Taft  in  an 
address  while  he  was  President,  "  is  the  establishment  of 
foreign  missions."  All  other  agencies  combined  do  not 
do  as  much  to  introduce  the  West  to  the  Oriental  races. 
The  missionaries  bind  the  peoples  in  friendliness.    They 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATION        95 

draw  after  them  the  love  of  milHons  in  the  lands  from 
which  they  come,  and  it  is  their  business  to  win  the 
friendship  of  those  to  whom  they  go.  There  they  become 
centers  of  good-will  and  kindly  feeling.  In  time  of  suf- 
fering it  has  been  they  who  enlisted  the  sympathy  of  the 
richer  peoples  and  who  are  the  almoners  of  their  bounty. 
Only  the  missionaries  and  their  enterprise  have  made  pos- 
sible the  immense  undertaking  of  relieving  the  Armenians, 
the  Assyrians  and  the  other  peoples  of  the  Near  East. 
Of  their  services  in  the  last  great  famine  of  China,  one 
of  the  leading  English  papers  in  Shanghai  remarked : 

"  It  rnust  be  regarded  as  a  fortunate  circumstance  that 
the  famine  committees  have  been  able  to  enlist  the  serv- 
ices of  the  local  missionaries  in  the  distribution  of  relief. 
Their  fitness  for  the  work  entrusted  to  them,  which  they 
have  willingly  undertaken,  no  one  will  question,  whilst 
their  probity  and  conscientious  administration  of  the 
funds  are  equally  beyond  cavil.  Their  knowledge  of  the 
language  and  customs  of  the  people,  and  their,  generally 
speaking,  friendly  relations  with  them,  constitute  them 
the  most  fitting  instruments  for  the  work."  * 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  indefinitely  the  evidences 
of  the  work  of  sympathy  and  conciliatory  understand- 
ing wrought  by  missionaries.  Many,  already  endeared 
to  the  people  among  whom  they  worked,  have  been 
enshrined  in  an  almost  religious  reverence  for  such 
sacrificial  service. 

The  missionary  enterprise  everywhere  is  itself  only 
when  it  is  a  movement  of  good-will  and  friendship.  It 
is  in  this  that  the  secret  of  its  power  to  promote  peace 
and  order  resides — a  power  greater,  where  it  is  allowed 

*  The  North  China  Herald,  March  28,  1907,  editorial,  "  The 
Famine." 


96       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

to  work,  than  any  other  power  the  West  possesses. 
"  I  have  relied,"  said  Sir  Peregrine  Maitland,  Governor 
of  Cape  Colony,  "  more  upon  the  labours  of  missionaries 
for  the  peaceful  government  of  the  natives  than  upon 
the  presence  of  British  troops."  "  For  the  preservation 
of  peace  between  the  colonists  and  natives,"  said  General 
Sir  Charles  Warren,  Governor  of  Natal,  "  one  missionary 
is  worth  a  battalion  of  soldiers."  "  In  my  judgment," 
said  Sir  Augustus  Rivers  Thompson,  Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor of  Bengal,  "  Christian  missionaries  have  done  more 
real  and  lasting  good  to  the  people  of  India  than  all  other 
agencies  combined.  They  have  been  the  salt  of  the 
country  and  the  true  saviours  of  the  empire." 

But  we  should  go  back  of  such  testimony  and  illustra- 
tion to  central  principles.  And  the  principle  here  is  that 
foreign  missions  represent  the  duty  of  unselfish  and 
helpful  relations  on  the  part  of  the  strong  nations  to  the 
weaker,  and  to  that  end  the  duty  of  understanding  and 
intelligent  sympathy.  The  best  type  of  British  diplo- 
matic service  has  supplied  this  intelligent  understanding 
of  the  language  and  life  of  other  peoples,  but  much  of  our 
political  contact  with  other  nations,  and  almost  all  of 
our  commercial  contact,  has  been  devoid  of  it.  Ex- 
President  Eliot  bore  frank  testimony  to  what  he  had 
found  in  the  Far  East ;  lifelong  residents  who  could  not 
speak  a  word  of  the  language  and  who  knew  none  of  the 
people,  and  the  great  body  of  foreigners,  with  the  excep- 
tion mainly  of  missionaries,  utterly  unacquainted  with 
the  real  life  of  those  among  whom  they  dwelt.  What 
would  the  British  and  the  Americans  do  if  their  foreign 
language  papers  were  to  be  repressed  in  China  and  India 
and  Japan  ?  There  can  be  no  constructive  handling  of  the 
present  world  problems  in  conditions  like  these.  And 
these  are  the  very  conditions  which  the  missionary  prin- 


A  00:N^STEUCTIVE  INTERPEETATION        97 

ciple  assails.  It  calls  for  a  sympathetic  understanding 
of  all  mankind,  of  its  literature,  its  religions,  its  social 
institutions,  its  ideals,  its  realities  and  its  dreams.  Mis- 
sions have  been  and  are  the  greatest  of  all  agencies  open- 
ing the  world  and  bringing  the  knowledge  of  it  to  the 
civilized  nations.  ''  We  owe  it  to  our  missionaries,"  said 
the  London  Times,  "that  the  whole  region  (of  South 
Africa)  has  been  opened  up."  Indeed,  the  one  name 
which  towers  over  all  others  in  African  exploration,  is 
David  Livingstone's.  "  In  the  annals  of  exploration  of 
the  dark  continent,"  said  Stanley,  "we  look  in  vain 
among  other  nationalities  for  such  a  name  as  Living- 
stone's." "  Religion,  commerce  and  scientific  zeal,"  said 
Professor  Whitney  of  Yale,  "  rival  one  another  in  bring- 
ing new  regions  and  peoples  to  light,  and  in  uncovering 
the  long  buried  remains  of  others  lost  or  decayed ;  and  of 
the  three  the  first  is  the  most  prevailing  and  effective." 
But  once  again  let  it  be  noted  that  these  testimonies  and 
illustrations  are  not  presented  here  in  any  apology  for  for- 
eign missions,  but  to  set  forth  a  principle  of  the  foreign 
mission  movement  which  is  essential  to  the  solution  of 
our  present-day  problems.  We  shall  make  no  progress  at 
all  toward  those  solutions  until  we  all  take  up  toward 
the  world  the  attitude  of  respect  and  sympathy  and 
understanding  without  which  missions  could  never  have 
gained  any  foothold  and  which,  apart  from  any  such 
prudential  consideration,  are  the  marks  of  its  essential 
spirit. 

But  a  yet  deeper  principle  than  this  lies  beneath  the 
missionary  enterprise—and  it  is  the  only  enterprise  which 
is  the  definite  and  uncompromising  avowal  of  this  princi- 
ple,—the  principle,  namely,  of  the  world  family  of  God, 
of  the  true  unity  of  mankind,  of  human  brotherhood  not 
as  a  phrase  but  as  a  reality.    This  conception  is  funda- 


98       THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

mental  to  Christian  missions.  They  hold  that  there  is 
one  God  and  that  He  is  the  God  of  all  men,  that  He  made 
all  men  of  one  blood,  that  there  is  one  Lord  and  Saviour 
of  all,  that  truth  of  whatsoever  kind  is  not  ethnic  but 
universal,  that  the  conception  of  different  religions  as 
equally  true  or  valid  is  as  absurd  as  the  conception  of 
ethnic  medical  sciences  or  racial  mathematics  or  national 
chemistries,  that  however  real  racial  differences  may  be, 
these  differences  do  not  go  down  to  the  essential  ground- 
work of  human  unity.  Mankind  is  all  one  family,  or 
ought  to  be,  and  the  Gospel  was  sent  to  the  end  that 
the  family  life  of  humanity  in  God  might  be  restored  in 
Christ.  The  missionary  movement  takes  issue  absolutely 
with  Mr.  Meredith  Townsend's  view  that  "  something 
radical,  something  unalterable  and  indestructible  divides 
the  Asiatic  from  the  European.  .  .  .  They  are 
fenced  off  from  each  other  by  an  invisible,  impalpable, 
but  impassable  wall."*  The  main  contention  in  Mr. 
Townsend's  essays,  that  human  unity  is  broken  in  the 
chasm  between  Asia  and  Europe,  is  what  on  principle 
and  from  experience  the  missionary  enterprise  denies. 
It  believes  that  God  made  one,  not  two  humanities,  and 
thousands  of  its  representatives  have  proved  the  truth 
of  Sir  Andrew  Eraser's  words  in  "  Among  Indian  Ra- 
jahs and  Ryots  "  when,  commenting  on  Mr.  Townsend's 
view,  he  says: 

"  It  IS  no  cant  sentiment  with  men  who  have  spent 
their  lives  among  Eastern  peoples,  that  God  has  made 
of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men  to  dwell  on  the  face  of 
the  earth.  Human  hearts,  human  needs,  human  senti- 
ments are  much  the  same  in  the  East  and  in  the  West. 
.  .  .  Human  hearts  come  together  in  the  East  just 
as  they  can  in  the  West." 

* "  Asia  and  Europe,"  pp.  50,  150. 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTERPEETATION        99 

On  any  other  theoiy,  what  a  hell  on  earth  we  have  to 
look  forward  to!  Asia  and  Europe  flowing  ever  more 
and  more  together,  but  unintelligible,  alien,  living  a  com- 
mon life  but  incapable  of  sharing  it,  working  at  a  com- 
mon problem  but  doomed  to  eternal  misunderstanding 
over  it,  answerable  to  the  same  God  but  incapable  of  a 
common  worship  or  a  common  responsibility.  This  is 
to  promise  us  a  future  of  perpetual  misconception  and 
dread  of  war.  St.  Paul  had  a  far  nobler  view.  He 
believed  in  the  one  family  of  God  and  the  unity  of  the 
world  in  that  family's  life : 

"  Now  in  Christ  Jesus,  ye  that  once  were  far  off  are 
made  nigh  in  the  blood  of  Christ.  For  He  is  our  peace 
Who  made  both  one,  and  brake  down  the  middle  wall  of 
partition,  having  abolished  in  His  flesh  the  enmity,  even 
the  law  of  commandments  contained  in  ordinances;  that 
He  might  create  in  Himself  of  the  twain  one  new  man,  so 
making  peace;  and  might  reconcile  them  both  in  one 
body  unto  God  through  the  cross,  having  slain  the  en- 
mity thereby;  and  He  came  and  preached  peace  to  you 
that  were  far  off,  and  peace  to  them  that  were  nigh ;  for 
through  Him  we  both  have  our  access  in  one  Spirit  unto 
the  Father.  So  then  ye  are  no  more  strangers  and  so- 
journers, but  ye  are  fellow-citizens  with  the  saints,  and 
of  the  household  of  God,  being  built  upon  the  founda- 
tion of  the  apostles  and  prophets,  Christ  Jesus  Himself 
being  the  chief  cornerstone ;  in  Whom  each  several  build- 
ing, fitly  framed  together,  groweth  into  a  holy  temple  in 
the  Lord;  in  Whom  ye  also  are  builded  together  for  a 
habitation  of  God  in  the  Spirit." 

Foreign  missions  are  the  affirmation  of  this  world  unity. 
And  foreign  missions  are  not  only  affirming  it.  They 
are  creating  it.  It  is  not  enough  to  say,  "All  men  are 
brothers."  For  a  generation  we  have  heard  religion  re- 
duced to  the  two  propositions  of  the  fatherhood  of  God 


100     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

and  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  this  reduction  offered 
to  us  as  a  reason  for  dismissing  the  missionary  enterprise 
as  superfluous.  But  humanity  is  one  only  in  ideal.  The 
brotherhood  of  man  is  still  an  unrealized  dream.  To 
profess  it  as  a  faith  is  not  enough,  unless  we  accompany 
our  profession  with  the  works  that  achieve  it.  Foreign 
missions  are  doing  this.  Wherever  they  go  they  produce 
the  consciousness  of  unity.  It  is  by  the  foreign  mission- 
ary movement  that  this  vision  of  the  truth  comes  to  men. 
The  non-Christian  faiths  denied  human  unity.  Chris- 
tianity affirmed  it  and  in  the  work  of  foreign  missions 
exemplified  and  validated  it.  The  world  has  to  learn 
from  foreign  missions  still  how  the  task  is  to  be  com- 
pleted. At  home  we  must  acquire  the  attitude  of  mind 
and  heart  toward  the  non-Christian  nations  which  this 
modern  reproduction  of  the  Incarnation  embodies,  and 
abroad  the  great  constructive  work  must  be  done  in  the 
non-Christian  nations  which  will  give  them  the  Christian 
principles  without  which  they  cannot  take  their  true 
place  or  fulfill  their  missions,  or  be  ready  for  human 
unity.  The  non-Christian  nations  are  realizing  that  they 
do  not  have  these  principles  and  must  find  them.  And 
these  new  principles  for  which  the  nations  are  feeling 
have  their  origin  and  their  full  life  only  in  the  missionary 
interpretation  of  Christianity. 

It  alone  fits  men  for  freedom,  by  teaching  them  self- 
control  in  liberty,  and  making  them  fearless  followers  of 
the  truth  which  makes  men  free.  The  two  greatest  gifts 
of  the  Gospel — truth  and  freedom — are  the  supreme  needs 
of  the  non-Christian  peoples.  These  nations  need  Chris- 
tianity to  fit  men  for  freedom.  They  need  it  also  to 
teach  men  service,  which  is  the  divine  end  of  freedom. 
Until  men  are  unselfish  freedom  is  only  an  enlarged 
opportunity  for  action  hostile  to  human  unity.     And 


A  CONSTRUCTIVE  INTEEPRETATION      101 

Christianity,  uttering  itself  through  one  channel  or  an- 
other, can  alone  teach  the  nations  this  law  of  ministiy, 
which  is  a  new  principle  to  the  non-Christian  peoples. 

Furthermore,  it  is  the  missionary  construction  of  Chris- 
tianity which  must  give  the  world  the  principle  of  equality 
of  man  and  woman  as  well  as  of  man  and  man.  The 
non-Christian  principles  of  class  and  sex  inequality  have 
ruled  the  whole  world  except  as  Christ  has  changed  it. 
The  missionary  enterprise  has  been  the  one  great  enter- 
prise of  modern  times  which  has  placed  men  and  women 
on  an  equality  of  administration  and  responsibility  in  its 
advancement  and  which  has  gone  to  the  non-Christian 
world,  which  has  always  been  a  man's  world,  and  the 
non-Christian  religions  which  have  been  men's  religions, 
with  a  message  of  human  equality  necessitated  by  its 
message  of  human  unity. 

And  one  other  principle  which  the  Christian  ideal  in 
foreign  missions  has  to  contribute  to  the  nations  from 
without  is  the  ideal  of  a  true  nationalism. 

"The  very  Idea  of  nationality  has  come  to  the  edu- 
cated mind  of  India  under  the  auspices  of  Christianity; 
it  has  been  undoubtedly  quickened  by  the  unconscious 
assimilation  of  ideas  and  principles  essentially  Christian. 
Split  up  hitherto  into  a  number  of  separate  and  conflicting 
races  and  castes,  a  corporate  life  is  now  beginning  to 

It  Is  Christianity  and  the  Christian  principles,  presented 
with  whatever  obscuration,  which  have  created  this  stir- 
ring and  given  it  the  life  of  hope.  Throughout  the  world 
the  missionary  movement  has  been  one  of  the  great  edu- 
cative ideas,  and  Is  the  true  norm  and  illumination  of  the 
Christian  nationalism  which  is  the  divine  principle  of  the 
next  stage  in  the  development  of  humanity. 

*  Slater,  "  Missions  and  Sociology,"  p.  14. 


102     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

And  missions  not  only  introduce  from  without  the 
principles  required  for  the  development  and  unity  of 
humanity,  but  they  present  in  doing  so  the  only  possible 
method  of  achieving  unity.  They  deal  directly  with  the 
individual  and  move  upon  his  personality  and  will,  and 
so  rest  the  new  movement  where  alone  it  can  stably 
rest,  upon  the  redeemed  character  of  persons.  "  The 
mightiest  civilizing  agencies,"  says  Dr.  Fairbairn,  "  are 
persons.  The  mightiest  civilizing  persons  are  Christian 
men."  And  it  appeals  through  the  mind  and  heart  of  the 
individual  to  the  reason  of  the  world.  "  If  our  people 
are  ever  to  be  moved,"  says  Mr.  Dickinson's  Chinese 
official,  "  their  reason  and  their  heart  must  be  con- 
vinced." ^  That  is  true  of  all  the  peoples,  and  that  is  the 
method,  and  the  only  method  of  the  missionary  enterprise. 
It  is  speaking  to  the  reason  and  the  heart  of  nations. 
By  the  purely  persuasive  agencies  which  it  uses,  the  voice 
of  the  friend,  the  steady  upheaving  transformation  of  the 
school,  the  tenderness  of  sympathy  in  suffering,  by  dis- 
solving prejudice  and  incarnating  the  truth  of  human 
oneness,  it  is  convincing  the  world's  reason,  even  when 
it  is  unaware,  and  has  already  penetrated  every  nation 
and  permeated  some  nations  with  the  principles  by  which 
the  people  are  to  fulfill  their  separate  destinies  and  attain 
their  heavenly  ordered  unity  at  the  last. 

Furthermore,  the  missionary  aim  of  Christianity  is 
essential  and  effective  because  it  provides  the  adequate 
moral  basis  which  is  necessary  for  the  life  and  institutions 
of  the  peoples.  All  the  non-Christian  peoples  have 
lacked  the  moral  basis  of  national  life.  The  Chinese  have 
come  nearest  to  possessing  it,  and  what  was  strong  in 
China's  neighbouring  nations  was  borrowed  from  the 
Chinese,  but  even  there  the  want  of  what  is  elementary 
* "  lyCtters  from  a  Chinese  Official,"  p.  42. 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATIOIsr      103 

in  Christianity  deprived  the  Chinese  people  of  the  central 
power  of  a  great  nationality.  As  S.  Wells  Williams 
wrote,  who  knew  the  nation  as  well  as  any  foreigner 
has  ever  known  it : 


"  Even  among  a  people  like  the  Chinese,  who  are  pos- 
sessed of  the  conveniences  of  life  and  held  together  by  an 
organized  government  founded  on  the  consent  of  all 
classes,  the  want  of  truth  and  integrity  weakens  every 
part  of  the  social  fabric.  Moral  ethics,  enforcing  the 
social  relations,  the  rights  and  duties  of  the  rulers  and 
ruled,  and  the  inculcation  of  the  five  constant  virtues 
have  been  taught  in  China  for  twenty-five  centuries,  and 
yet  have  failed  to  teach  the  people  to  be  truthful.  They 
never  can  do  it,  for  they  have  no  sanctions  calculated  to 
influence  the  mind  and  strengthen  it  to  resist  temptation. 
,  .  .  But  until  truth  becomes  even  here  the  basis  of 
society,  so  that  a  man  sinks  in  the  estimation  of  his 
fellows  if  caught  in  a  falsehood,  and  is  afraid  to  lie  be- 
cause he  will  be  despised,  the  Chinese  must  remain  far 
below  any  Christian  nation.  They  cannot  progress  in 
civilization  until  they  become  truthful.  No  corporate 
bodies  formed  among  them  for  the  purpose  of  carrying 
out  great  plans  of  improvement  can  cohere  in  conse- 
quence of  this  inherent  weakness,  because  no  subscribers 
will  trust  their  money  to  such  a  company.  No  insurance 
company  can  obtain  the  confidence  of  the  community; 
no  trust  company  can  succeed,  let  it  promise  ever  so 
much.  If  the  government  issues  coin,  it  is  taken  for  its 
intrinsic  worth,  like  bullion,  because  it  is  so  tampered 
with  as  to  lose  its  nominal  value ;  and  the  case  is  still 
worse  with  its  bonds, — so  that  China  alone,  of  all  the 
nations  of  the  earth,  has  even  now  no  national  silver  or 
gold  coin,  and  no  bank  bills,  the  only  currency  being  a 
miserable  copper-iron  coin,  so  debased  as  not  to  pay 
counterfeiters  to  imitate  it.  .  .  .  Truth  alone  is  the 
proper  aliment  for  the  mind ;  on  it  alone  can  all  the  facul- 
ties acquire  their  full  development."  ' 

'  S.  Wells  Williams,  "  The  Middle  Kingdom,"  Vol.  I,  p.  352,  ff. 


104     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

And  so  of  every  nation.  Its  deepest  needs  are  the 
moral  needs,  which  must  be  met  before  the  people  can 
be  free  to  fulfill  their  divinely  ordered  ends.  "  It  is  the 
moral  sense  of  the  people  that  has  to  be  elevated,"  .says 
a  Hindu  writer  of  his  own  nation."  And  both  in  each 
nation  in  its  needs,  and  among  the  nations  in  their  re- 
lations, Christianity,  and  Christianity  alone,  can  furnish 
the  indispensable  foundation.  It  is  in  Christianity  and 
the  principles  which  men  cannot  permanently  separate 
from  their  historic  origin  in  it  and  their  organic  connec- 
tion with  it  that  the  moral  basis  of  true  nationalism  and 
of  true  universalism  is  to  be  found.  As  Bishop  Brent 
says,  in  speaking  of  the  Christian  Church  in  which  Chris- 
tianity prosecutes  her  central  mission  among  men: 

"  Upon  her  perpetuation  in  the  civilized  world  depends 
the  maintenance  of  common  morality,  not  to  mention 
moral  refinements,  the  achievement  of  even  that  moder- 
ate success  in  character-building  which  marks  the  path- 
way of  Christian  history,  that  buoyancy  of  hope  which 
<»sts  upon  the  harsh  disciplines  of  life  something  akin  to 
transfiguring  radiancy.  Upon  her  extension  to  every 
corner  of  the  world  that  is  ignorant  of  the  truth,  as  made 
known  in  the  good  news  of  the  Saviour's  message,  hinges 
the  consummation  of  God's  beneficent  purposes  for  the 
human  race,  the  full  knowledge  of  Christ's  personality  by 
men,  and  that  unification  of  the  nations  of  the  world 
which  has  ever  been  the  dream  of  philosophers,  the 
labour  of  philanthropists,  and  the  prayer  of  the  saints." 

The  missionary  movement  embodies  the  one  supreme 
uniting  power.  Within  each  nation  for  the  perfect  de- 
velopment of  its  character  and  for  the  faithful  fulfill- 
ment of  its  mission  there  must  be  some  adequate  unifying 
bond.     The  bond  must  relate  men  in  their  deepest  life, 

'  Jwala  Dass  in  the  Hindustan  Review.  See  The  Literary  Di- 
gest, Feb.  15,  1908,  p.  220. 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATION      105 

in  the  foundations  of  their  principles,  in  the  fountains  of 
their  ideals,  in  their  eternal  hopes.  Only  a  common  re- 
ligion can  supply  that  bond.  "Any  one  realizing  the  im- 
portance attached  to  religion  in  Asia,"  says  Arminius 
Vambery,  "will  easily  understand  how  impossible  it  is 
to  bridge  over  (politically)  the  gulf  which  separates  the 
professors  of  these  various  beliefs  in  India.  Religion 
absorbs  the  interest  of  the  Asiatic ;  it  is  stronger  than  his 
feeling  of  nationality."  * 

When  any  land  is  torn  by  religious  and  racial  division, 
as  Dr.  Ghose  reminded  the  Surat  Section  of  the  Indian 
National  Congress  in  1907,  after  the  unhappy  division 
of  the  Congress,  it  cannot  realize  the  unity  of  its  char- 
acter or  its  destiny.  It  was  the  missionary  movement 
in  Christianity  which  furnished  the  Roman  Empire  with 
this  essential  bond,  and  his  discernment  of  the  power 
and  duty  of  Christianity  thus  to  unite  men  marked  the 
supreme  statesmanship  of  St.  Paul.  The  task  which  St. 
Paul  performed  for  the  Roman  Empire  we  have  now  to 
perform  for  the  world,  and  in  a  more  complicated  iqvm, 
but  a  form  for  which  Christianity  is  entirely  adequate. 
We  have  to  locate  Christianity  in  the  life  of  each  separate 
nation  for  the  perfection  of  its  national  character  and 
the  accomplishment  of  its  national  destiny,  and  we  have 
to  set  it  in  the  whole  life  of  the  world  so  as  to  bind  into 
one  each  perfected  nationality  and  to  cement  and  com- 
plete with  its  unity  the  whole  varied  life  of  mankind. 
This  is  the  work  that  must  now  be  done,  and  which 
Christianity  alone  can  do.  The  privilege  of  it  is  ours 
who  believe  that  God  has  made  of  one  blood  all  the 
nations  of  men,  and  has  appointed  to  each  the  bounds 
of  its  habitation  and  the  glory  of  its  own  distinct  mission, 
and  has  also  given  them  in  the  Gospel  of  His  Son  that 
* "  Western  Culture  in  Eastern  Lands,"  Ch.  II. 


106      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

common  life  provided  for  all  mankind,  wherein  there  is 
neither  Greek  nor  Jew,  circumcision  nor  uncircumcision, 
barbarian,  Scythian,  bondman  nor  freeman,  but  Christ 
is  all  and  in  all. 

But  the  issues  which  have  arisen  in  recent  years  over 
Oriental  immigration  have  raised  the  question  of  the 
implications  and  limitations  of  the  doctrine  of  human 
unity.  If  the  world  is  one  and  human  brotherhood  is 
equal,  what  are  the  logical  consequences  in  the  case  of 
legislation  which  rests  upon  contrary  assumptions?  So 
far  as  any  legislation  does  rest  upon  the  contrary  assump- 
tion, the  only  judgment  which  we  can  pass,  under  the 
mind  of  Christ,  is  one  of  condemnation.  The  law  of 
human  unity  is  the  sovereign  law  and  mankind  is  bound 
to  live  by  it  and  to  recognize  in  every  man  a  brother  to 
all  his  brethren.  But  within  humanity  there  are  also  races 
and  nations  and  families,  and  the  recognition  of  racial 
and  national  distinctions,  and  of  the  insulation  of  the 
family  as  a  separate  integer  is  not  only  not  inconsistent 
with  the  conception  of  human  unity,  but  is  essential 
to  it. 

The  spirit  of  nationalism  is  inevitable  and  it  is  invalu- 
able. It  is  not  in  conflict  with  the  ideal  of  a  united  hu- 
manity. It  is  essential  to  its  realization.  The  same 
God  who  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men,  assigned 
them  also  their  racial  and  national  character  and  destinies 
to  the  end  of  a  perfected  humanity.  The  development  of 
state  consciousness,  state  conscience,  state  ambition,  state 
duty,  is  a  development  in  the  will  of  God  for  man,  and 
the  true  world  citizenship  will  recognize  this  and  build 
the  unity  of  mankind,  not  upon  any  speculative  theory 
of  humanity,  nor  upon  any  sand-heap  of  individual  units, 
but  upon  corporate  nationalities  such  as  God  has  always 
dealt  with  and  built  upon  in  human  history.    He  used  a 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPRET ATION      107 

nation  to  prepare  the  salvation  of  the  world,  and  He  has 
always  wrought  His  purposes  through  racial  movements. 
His  men  were  men  of  their  nations,  and  His  judgments 
were  judgments  of  nations  of  men. 

The  problems  presented  by  a  world  made  up  of  con- 
scious and  independent  nationalities,  with  distinct  mis- 
sions to  fulfill  and  distinct  contributions  to  make  to  the 
ultimate  perfected  human  society,  are  complicated  and 
difficult  but  they  are  not  insoluble.  What  makes  them 
dangerous  is  the  introduction  of  the  spirit  which  always 
arises  from  the  denial  of  the  fundamental  postulate  of 
world  unity,  the  family  idea  of  humanity.  If  we  accept 
this  idea  freely,  there  is  no  danger  of  jealousy  or  injustice 
in  the  effort  of  each  nation  to  guard  for  itself  its  own 
mission  and  national  duty.  The  recognition  of  human 
brotherhood  does  not  necessitate  universal  miscegenation, 
much  less  marital  communism.  Likewise  it  does  not 
necessitate  the  surrender  of  national  identity  or  the  con- 
fusion of  racial  character.  Just  what  racial  intermixtures 
are  wise  and  beneficial,  what  are  the  proper  bounds  and 
limitations  of  the  safeguarding  of  national  character  and 
personality,  are  problems  which  nations  should  work  out 
in  good-will  and  mutual  considerateness,  and  which  they 
can  work  out  thus  on  the  basis  of  a  genuine  mutual 
acceptance  of  the  principles  of  human  unity  and  racial 
function. 

Foreign  missions  are  showing  how  this  problem  can  be 
worked  out.  They  are  based  on  the  assumption  of  human 
unity.  They  seek  to  establish  a  universal  society.  At 
the  same  time  they  operate  on  the  principles  of  nationality 
and  of  distinctive  racial  character  and  mission.  They 
believe  that  each  section  of  humanity  has  its  own  contri- 
bution to  make  to  the  ultimate  wealth  of  the  whole,  and 
that  each  should  fulfill  its  own  distinct  task;  that  in  each 


108     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

there  should  be  a  national  Church,  of  the  soil,  rooted  in 
the  tradition  and  life  of  the  people,  fitted  to  its  customs 
and  institutions,  sharing  its  character  and  participating 
in  its  mission — ^yes,  defining  and  inspiring  that  mission  as 
it  can  do  only  when  it  is  a  truly  national  Church  subject 
to  no  alien  bondage.  In  such  a  Church  Christianity  will, 
of  course,  surrender  nothing  that  is  essential  and  uni- 
versal. It  enters  into  no  compromise.  It  simply  domesti- 
cates itself  in  a  new  home  which  it  has  been  long  in 
finding,  and  from  the  new  roots  which  it  sinks  into 
humanity  expands  that  interpretation  of  the  life  of  God 
in  man  and  nourishes  that  hope  of  man's  future  in  God, 
which  can  only  be  perfected  as  all  the  peoples  bring  their 
glory  and  honour  into  the  final  temple  of  humanity.  If 
we  borrowed  these  conceptions  and  carried  them  over 
into  the  present-day  problems  of  world  politics,  we  should 
be  lifted  sheer  over  some  of  our  current  perplexities  into 
a  new  atmosphere  of  international  life. 

By  this  recognition  of  world  unity  as  an  ideal  and  by 
all  that  foreign  missions  are  doing  to  realize  it,  they  are 
making  a  great  constructive  contribution  to  the  cause  of 
Christian  unity  at  home.  The  influence  of  the  principle 
of  nationalism,  to  which  I  have  just  referred,  is  one  part 
of  this  contribution.  The  ideal  of  foreign  missions  is 
another.  That  ideal  is  the  creation  of  indigenous  national 
Churches,  deadened  by  no  throttling  laws  of  uniformity, 
free  and  varied  as  the  spirit  of  man,  but  still  unified, 
corporate,  animated  by  one  organic  life,  fulfilling  one 
great  mission,  and  inspiring  and  answering  the  national 
life  and  destiny  of  the  people.  If  that  is  the  right  ideal 
for  Japan  or  India,  it  is  the  right  ideal  for  Scotland  or  the 
United  States.  It  is  the  ideal  toward  which  the  people 
of  Canada  are  working.  The  very  ideal  of  missions 
involves  union  and  suggests  the  road  to  us  at  homew 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  mXERPEETATION      109 

Foreign  missions  have  shown  us  the  uniting  power  of 
a  great  work.  The  immensity  of  the  common  task,  the 
essential  oneness  of  aim  of  all  engaged  in  that  task  press 
the  workers  together  in  spite  of  their  unacquaintance  and 
their  dissonant  traditions.  When  men  are  not  united  in 
their  work,  they  can  easily  remain  apart,  exalting  the 
secondary  things  into  fundamental  principles,  but  when 
they  are  seeking  the  evangelization  of  a  world,  the  pri- 
mary things  assert  their  dominance.  Dr.  Swift,  the  great 
spirit  who  laid  the  foundation  of  the  foreign  missionary 
organization  of  the  American  Presbyterian  Church,  un- 
derstood this  principle  and  expressed  it  in  one  of  the  first 
reports  of  the  Board,  referring  to  the  temporary  abandon- 
ment by  the  Church  in  1826  of  its  corporate  responsibility 
as  a  missionary  agency,  and  to  its  later  separation  into 
New  and  Old  Schools : 


"  Had  the  commotions  which  now  agitate  the  Church 
found  its  ministry  and  its  churches  bound  together  by  the 
hallowed  ties  of  one  harmonious  and  life-inspiring  effort 
to  evangelize  the  world,  those  waves  whose  rockings  now 
threaten  its  destruction  would  scarcely  have  left  the  trace 
of  their  existence.  .  .  .  The  days  of  division  and  in- 
action cannot  last  forever.  The  Spirit  of  God  will  return 
in  glory  and  in  power  to  the  Churches,  and  the  spirit  of 
love  and  concord  to  the  Saints." 


Common  aims  and  honest  effort  to  realize  those  aims 
are  making  us  one  abroad.  They  can  make  us  one  at 
home.  More  than  that,  they  require  unity  of  us.  As 
Dr.  Henderson  said  in  his  final  address  as  Moderator  of 
the  United  Free  Church  Assembly  in  1909 : 

"  Fathers  and  brethren,  may  I  so  far  allude  to  the  great 
subject  of  Church  Union  as  to  say  that  nothing  will  so 


110     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

effectively  and  so  truly  prepare  for  it  as  such  development 
of  our  spiritual  life  by  active  service?  If  it  is  to  come 
as  a  blessing — which  God  grant  it  may  speedily — it  will 
be  as  a  union  of  those  who  labour  for  it  from  a  supreme 
desire  for  fuller  and  freer  service ;  from  a  pressing  need 
of  developing  a  free  and  fruitful  life  in  direct  obedience 
to  the  will  of  Christ.  Hindrances  which  thwart  such 
spiritual  aspirations  will  become  intolerable,  and  their  re- 
moval will  be  demanded  at  all  costs.  And  union  will 
come,  not  by  mere  good-will  wishing  for  it,  or  adroit 
scheming  to  bring  it  about,  but  when  an  awakened  sense 
of  the  urgency  of  spiritual  service  thrusts  out  of  its  way 
all  that  opposes  itself  to  the  doing  of  the  will  of  Christ." 

The  simple  existence  of  the  missionary  spirit  is  evi- 
dence of  a  vital  unity  in  those  who  are  animated  by  it. 
They  may  be  travelling  different  roads,  but  their  spirit  is 
from  a  common  source.  "  We  love  because  He  first  loved 
us."  All  our  human  love  has  a  single  origin.  The 
deeper  and  richer  this  love  becomes,  the  nearer  and  fuller 
our  fellowship  with  the  Source,  the  closer,  whether  we 
know  it  or  not,  do  our  lives  come,  each  to  his  brother's. 
And  this  essential  unity  is  found  not  in  a  common  source 
alone,  but  also  in  a  common  end.  For  it  is  a  common  end 
which  all  the  varying  missionary  impulses  are  seeking,  the 
end  of  the  world  Kingdom  of  Christ,  of  the  realized 
Family  of  God.  We  may  differ  in  our  definitions  of  the 
thing.  We  shall  find  when  we  come  to  it  that  the  thing 
itself  differs  from  all  our  definitions.  But  it  is  the  thing, 
however  we  define  it,  which  we  are  all  seeking.  That  is  a 
bond  which  no  unconsciousness  or  denial  on  our  part  can 
dissolve.  And  more  than  this,  the  elevation  of  this  end 
as  supreme  unifies  men.  Whenever  men  believe  enough 
in  a  cause  to  die  for  that  cause,  the  sacrament  of  their 
consecration  discloses  a  unity  deeper  than  all  their  dis- 
agreement.    When  Churches  or  men  say  one  to  the  other, 


A  COKSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATION      111 

"  Come  and  let  us  die  for  that  for  which  Christ  died,"  or, 
when  they  are  not  near  enough  to  say  it  one  to  the  other, 
but  are  sufficiently  near  to  Christ  each  to  say  it  to  Him, 
then  in  the  death  to  which  they  go  they  pass  no  more 
divided,  but  as  one. 

And  foreign  missions  provide  the  larger  stage,  the 
ampler  air  in  which  we  can  pass  out  from  the  proximity 
of  what  has  hampered  us,  and  scale  our  estimates  and 
measurements  to  the  true  standard  of  the  full  life  of 
humanity.  We  come  to  a  place  of  vaster  hopes,  of 
richer  flexibilities,  of  expanded  life.  We  do  not  stay 
there  on  the  level  of  our  history,  of  our  past  disagree- 
ments, and  seek  by  modification,  by  surrender,  or  supple- 
ment to  fit  them  together.  We  simply  rise  to  a  higher 
level,  into  a  unity  which  comprehends  in  its  completeness 
our  half-lights  and  fragments.  Our  theologies  are  to 
be  reconciled  at  last,  not  by  a  restatement  which  will 
balance  them  afresh  and  establish  a  universal  com- 
promise and  equipoise.  They  are  to  be  reconciled  in 
God.  The  living  God,  conceived  and  experienced  as  the 
God  of  all  men,  will  unify  them  and  supplant  them.  And 
so  with  all  our  disagreements  as  Christians.  We  shall 
not  need  to  compose  them.  As  we  move  upward  into 
our  true  air  and  outward  into  our  whole  life  each  man 
will  be  the  most  eager  of  all  to  lay  aside  his  error,  and  in 
the  world  knowledge  and  world  love  we  shall  find  our  lost 
unity  in  our  freshly  discovered  God.  It  is  no  enmity  to 
our  past  to  believe  that  it  did  not  exhaust  God.  There  is 
no  disloyalty  to  the  past  in  believing  that  God  means  the 
future  to  be  better  than  it.  Unless  the  past  has  made 
ready  for  a  better  future,  the  past  was  a  bad  past.  Only 
those  things  are  good  that  make  ready  for  better  things 
to  come  after  them,  and  those  men  are  disloyal  to  the 
past,  who  believe  that  all  the  great  things  are  in  a  golden 


112     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

age  gone  by.  Very  great  and  glorious  the  past  has  been, 
but  the  past  will  have  failed  to  teach  its  lesson  to  us,  the 
past  will  have  failed  to  fulfill  its  mission  in  the  will 
of  God  if  it  binds  men  forever  in  the  chains  of  its 
sectional  apprehensions  or  institutional  forms,  if  it  has 
not  made  them  ready  for  larger  and  completer  things  and 
led  them  on  to  such  a  unity  as  Christ  Himself,  we  must 
believe,  longed  for  while  He  was  here,  and  waits  for  now 
where  He  is  gone. 

In  the  methods  which  foreign  missions  took  up  instinc- 
tively on  their  field,  there  is  light  upon  some  of  the 
questions  which  seem  to  perplex  the  Church  so  greatly 
at  home — for  example,  the  relation  of  the  Church  to 
social  service  and  of  religion  to  education.  What  is  the 
function  of  the  Church?  How  far  is  it  the  Church's 
business  to  care  for  philanthropy,  to  organize  hospitals 
and  asylums,  to  provide  sanitation,  to  organize  industry, 
to  look  after  the  housing  of  the  poor,  to  concern  itself 
with  the  redemption  of  the  social  environment?  Is  the 
Church  justified  in  concerning  itself  at  all  with  these 
things,  or  is  its  one  business  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel 
to  individual  men?  The  work  of  foreign  missions  from 
the  beginning  has  by  the  instinct  of  Christianity  given  its 
answer.  As  an  aged  apostle  and  missionary,  Bishop 
Thoburn,  said: 

"  It  is  just  as  natural  for  one  who  has  the  love  of  Christ 
in  his  heart,  if  he  sees  a  man  hungry,  to  feed  him,  or  to 
watch  with  the  sick,  or  to  devote  himself  in  any  way  to 
relieving  distress,  as  it  was  for  Christ  when  He  was  on 
earth.  And  if  any  one  of  you  can  fail  to  relieve  suffering 
when  it  is  within  your  power  to  do  it,  let  me  tell  you  that 
you  have  yet  to  prove  that  you  have  the  same  kind  of  love 
in  your  hearts  that  Christ  had. 

"  I  could  give  you  many  illustrations  on  this  point,  but  I 
will  confine  myself  to  just  one.    You  take  a  young  man 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEIiPEETATIOIsr      113 

out  of  this  meeting  and  say  to  him:  'You  are  going 
abroad  as  a  missionary.  Don't  be  drawn  aside  into  other 
enterprises.  Keep  to  the  one  thing,  the  preaching  of 
Christ.'  '  I  shall  try  to  do  so,'  he  says.  He  lands  on  an 
Eastern  shore  and  starts  up  into  the  interior  of  the  coun- 
try, and  at  the  first  river  that  he  has  to  cross,  as  he  goes 
down  to  the  ferry  boat,  he  finds  a  row  of  lepers  lining  the 
path,  and  it  comes  into  his  heart  at  once  that  those  people 
should  have  something  done  for  them.  He  has  a  new 
love  in  his  heart  as  he  crosses  that  river,  and  some  day  it 
will  take  form.  He  crosses  the  river  and  goes  along  the 
highway,  and  finds  a  starving  child;  the  little  one  says, 

*  My  parents  have  deserted  me  and  I  am  dying  of  hunger.' 
He  cannot  pass  that  child,  and  yet  if  he  takes  the  child  he 
becomes  responsible  for  its  keeping,  and  he  has  started 
the  nucleus  of  an  orphanage.  He  goes  on  and  perhaps 
finds  the  parents  dying  by  the  roadside.     *  Well,'  he  says, 

*  I  must  take  care  of  these  people.'  And  he  founds  an 
almshouse.  He  goes  on  upon  his  journey  and  he  finds 
the  lame,  and  the  sick,  and  the  halt,  and  the  blind,  and  he 
says, '  I  must  relieve  these  suffering  people.'  Then  he  has 
a  medical  dispensary  and  a  hospital.  They  are  all  there 
before  he  reaches  his  station.  His  friend  comes  out  to 
visit  him  and  finds  him  thus  surroimded,  and  he  says,  '  I 
thought  you  were  going  to  do  but  one  work.  I  thought 
you  were  going  to  preach  Christ.'  He  answers,  '  That 
was  my  intention,  but  I  couldn't  help  it'  No.  If  he  had 
the  love  of  Christ  in  him  he  couldn't  help  it." 

These  expressions  of  the  Christian  Spirit  are  irrepress- 
ible, and  they  are  characteristic.  Whether  medical  mis- 
sions and  charitable  activities  are  proper  agencies  of  the 
missionary  enterprise  are  useless  questions.  They  can- 
not be  prevented.  If  missionaries  see  widows  burned 
and  children  slaughtered  and  villages  ravaged  in  slave 
raids,  and  famine  orphans  and  Christ's  sheep  scattered 
abroad  and  sufi:ering  with  no  man  caring,  they  are  going 
to  care,  and  agitation  and  action  are  as  certain  as  the 
love  of  Christ.     And  such  services  are  themselves  manr 


114     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

festations  of  Christ.  They  are  original  to  Christianity. 
The  non-Christian  peoples  recognize  this.  "  There  is 
plenty  of  scope  for  active  work/'  said  the  leading  social 
reform  paper  of  Madras,  "  not  only  for  policemen,  but  for 
earnest  men  and  women,  of  course  among  Christians. 
Our  countrymen  must  pardon  us  for  this  piece  of  plain 
speaking,  as  they  have  never  shown  the  least  anxiety  to 
reclaim  the  fallen.  For  '  once  fallen  always  fallen ' 
would  seem  to  be  their  maxim."  *  All  pure  unselfishness 
preaches  Christ.  Indeed,  it  is  the  only  way  He  can  be 
preached.  No  words  can  speak  Christ  to  men  as  words 
can  speak  Him  when  pictured  also  in  deeds.  Many  of 
the  non-Christian  peoples  are  kindergarten  peoples  and 
need  to  be  taught  by  object  lessons.  Acts  must  put  con- 
tent into  words  for  them.  The  love  of  Christ  must  be 
interpreted  to  them  by  the  vision  of  a  man  in  whom 
Christ  is  loving  them. 

But  universal  charity  is  not  the  aim  of  the  foreign 
missionary  movement.  It  cannot  heal  or  feed  the  world 
any  more  than  it  can  educate  it,  and  it  is  not  its  business 
to  try  to  do  so.  All  that  the  Church  is  giving  or  would 
need  to  give  to  discharge  its  distinctive  foreign  mission 
work  would  not  suffice  to  meet  the  physical  sufferings  of 
the  Yangtse  Valley  or  to  educate  Bengal.  Foreign  mis- 
sions attempt  as  much  of  such  work  as  is  necessary  to 
get  more  of  it  done.  Foreign  missions  cannot  do  it  all, 
but  they  do  what  they  do  in  order  that  other  agencies 
may  do  all  that  ought  to  be  done.  In  part  foreign  mis- 
sions seek  to  raise  up  an  indigenous  Church  which  will 
do  more  than  foreign  missions  could  do,  but  in  larger 
part  still,  foreign  missions  look  forward  to  such  a  Chris- 
tianization  of  the  state  as  will  accomplish  through  it  all 
that  can  be  accomplished  by  organized  human  effort.  Is 
*  Quoted  by  Slater,  "  Missions  and  Sociology,"  p.  34. 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATION      115 

not  the  method  of  foreign  missions  the  indication  of  the 
rational  poHcy  for  the  Church  at  home?  It  is  the  busi- 
ness of  the  Church  to  create  ideals,  to  blaze  trails,  to 
generate  power,  to  maintain  purpose,  and,  until  a  Chris- 
tian State  has  been  developed,  to  do  all  the  actual  work 
of  social  as  well  as  individual  redemption  that  can  be 
done.  But  when  and  as  such  a  state  is  developed  it  will 
be  the  work,  because  it  Avill  be  the  nature,  of  that  state 
to  establish  all  righteousness.  Indeed,  just  as  foreign 
missions  have  their  fulfillment  in  the  national  Church, 
so  in  the  perfect  coming  of  a  Christian  State  the  Church 
may  have  its  fulfillment.  In  the  vision  which  was  given 
him  of  the  heavenly  commonwealth  into  which  all  the 
glory  of  the  nations  is  to  be  gathered,  St.  John  saw  no 
temple.  Church  and  State  were  the  same  thing.  The 
Lord  God  Almighty  and  the  Lamb  were  the  only  temple. 
Twenty  years  ago  the  most  criticized  feature  of  the 
work  of  foreign  missions  was  its  use  of  education  as  a 
missionary  agency.  Although  there  are  still  a  few  mis- 
sions which  neglect  education,  and  although  Lord  William 
Cecil  complains  of  this  neglect  on  a  large  scale  on  the  part 
of  British  missions  in  China,  nevertheless  the  objection 
to  the  principle  of  educational  missionary  work  has 
passed  away,  and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  a  great  part  of 
the  sudden  transformation  of  China  and  of  the  slow  and 
unnoticed  but  equally  real  transformation  of  India  have 
been  due  to  the  use  of  schools  by  the  Christian  Church, 
partly  as  a  training  ground  for  leaders  and  partly  as  a 
fountain  of  ideas.  Foreign  missions  have  from  the  outset 
believed  that  religion  must  use  education,  both  because 
it  needed  it  and  the  power  which  it  produced,  and  also 
because  education  without  religion  is  a  source  of  danger 
to  a  nation,  and  each  nation  should  have  before  its  eyes, 
accordingly,  in  the  Christian  schools  of  the  missionaries. 


116      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

an  object  lesson  of  what  education  could  do  and  of  the 
indispensable  necessity  of  the  religious  principle  in  educa- 
tion. Duff  acted  upon  these  convictions  at  the  beginning 
of  missionary  work  in  India,  and  courageously  told  the 
Government  what  would  follow  if  it  acted  otherwise : 

"  If  in  India  you  do  give  the  people  knowledge  without 
religion,  rest  assured  that  it  is  the  greatest  blunder,  polit- 
ically speaking,  that  ever  was  committed.  Having  free, 
unrestricted  access  to  the  whole  range  of  our  English  lit- 
erature and  science,  they  will  despise  and  reject  their  own 
systems  of  learning.  Once  driven  out  of  their  systems, 
they  will  inevitably  become  infidels  in,  religion;  and, 
shaken  out  of  the  mechanical  round  of  their  religious 
observances,  without  moral  principles  to  balance  their 
thoughts  or  guide  their  movements,  they  will  as  certainly 
become  discontented,  restless  agitators/' 

What  Duff  foretold  has  come  to  pass  in  India,  and  in 
Egypt  also,  and  wise  men  are  dreading  it  in  Japan  and 
turn  to  Christianity  as  the  one  power  that  can  help. 
Said  Count  Okuma  recently : 

"  Any  nation  that  neglects  the  spiritual  in  the  education 
of  its  citizens,  though  it  may  flourish  for  a  time,  must 
eventually  decay.  The  origin  of  m.odern  civilization  is  to 
be  found  in  the  teaching  of  the  Sage  of  Judea,  by  whom 
alone  the  moral  dynamic  is  supplied." 

And  if  they  do  not  turn  to  Christianity  for  what  they 
need  the  people  of  India  are  nevertheless  making  it  clear 
that  they  realize  that  religion  is  indispensable  to  educa- 
tion because  indispensable  to  life.  These  wants  are  as 
real  in  America  as  in  India,  and  the  Church  at  home  will 
do  well  to  draw  from  the  lessons  of  our  missionary  ex- 
perience a  deeper  purpose  to  convert  to  Christianity  the 


A  CONSTEUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATION      117 

educational   influences  which  are   shaping  the   coming 
citizenship  of  the  nation. 

In  a  larger  sense,  also,  foreign  missions  are  a  reminder 
of  the  need  of  religion  in  national  life.  They  are  our  one 
protest  against  secularism  in  Asia.  So  far  as  most  of 
our  contact  with  Asia  and  Africa  is  concerned,  our  Chris- 
tian nations  might  as  well  have  been  materialistic.  There 
was  little  in  our  conduct  to  betray  any  idealism,  genuine 
sympathy  or  altruistic  good-will.  Mr.  Fukuzawa's  paper, 
the  Jiji  Shimpo,  once  remarked  that  in  the  early  days  of 
Japanese  intercourse : 

"  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  many  serious  troubles 
would  have  occurred  had  not  the  Christian  missionary  not 
only  showed  to  the  Japanese  the  altruistic  side  of  the 
Occidental  character,  but  also  by  his  teaching  and' his 
preaching  imparted  a  new  and  attractive  aspect  to  the 
intercourse  which  otherwise  would  have  been  masterful 
and  repellent.  The  Japanese  cannot  thank  the  missionary 
too  much  for  the  admirable  leaven  that  he  introduced 
into  their  relation  with  foreigners." 

And  Count  Okuma  has  expressed  frankly  his  opinion  of 
European  character  as  seen  in  Japan : 

"  Comparing  Europeans  and  Japanese,  I  do  not  think 
that  the  Europeans  then  (thirty  years  ago)  in  Japan  were 
a  particularly  high  class  of  persons;  nor  do  I  think  that 
those  here  now  are  particularly  high  class." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Japan  was  often  irritated,  almost 
beyond  endurance,  by  her  political  contact  with  the  West. 
The  missionary  influence  smoothed  over  and  conciliated 
this  irritation.    Mr.  Fukuzawa  declared: 

"  I  once  said  that  if  no  missionaries  had  ever  come  to 
our  country,  the  dissoluteness  and  wantonness  of  for- 


118     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

eigners  would  have  come  to  be  much  greater  and  our  rela- 
tions to  foreigners  would  not  be  what  they  are  now." 

We  need  a  Christianization  of  all  the  impact  of  the  West 
upon  the  East,  and  to  that  end  we  need  the  acceptance 
at  home  of  the  missionary  affirmation  of  religion  as  the 
central  and  comprehending  necessity  of  national  life  and 
international  relationship. 

I  have  been  speaking  of  the  missionary  movement  in 
its  modern  aspects,  but  a  larger  survey  would  show  that 
in  some  measure  the  ideals  and  principles  we  have  noted 
have  been  illustrated  and  advanced  by  all  the  forward 
movements  of  the  Church  throughout  the  ages,  as  the 
Church  has  passed  out  from  old  limits  to  plant  itself  on 
new  soil.  Recall  the  history  of  the  Nestorian  Church. 
As  one  who  has  given  his  life  for  that  Church  and  for  the 
Kurds,  with  a  devotion  as  apostolic  as  it  is  modest  and 
selfless,  wrote  before  the  horrors  of  the  war  came  down 
as  a  deluge  of  death  upon  these  unoffending  people  and 
nearly  wiped  out  the  nation : 

"  Without  a  home  board  to  support  it  or  government  to 
protect  it,  in  highly  civilized  cities,  among  wild  mountain 
tribes  and  the  nomads  of  the  plains  all  the  way  from 
Antioch  to  Pekin,  the  Nestorians  preached  the  Gospel  to 
Syrians,  Arabs,  Kurds,  Persians,  Hindus  and  Mongo- 
lians, established  schools  and  organized  churches.  And 
this  was  not  done  without  the  shedding  of  blood;  the 
martyrs  of  this  Church  were  countless.  And  after 
Tamerlane  and  Ghengis  Khan  and  the  Moslem  armies 
had  ended  their  bloody  work,  the  self-inflicted  punish- 
ment it  may  be  of  a  disobedient  Church,  the  remnant  of 
that  Church,  cut  off  from  their  brethren  in  the  West, 
despised  and  hated  by  their  fanatical  conquerors,  almost 
continuously  oppressed  or  persecuted,  kept  the  faith,  held 
fast  at  least  to  the  Name  of  Jesus.  For  a  thousand  years 
in  the  midst  of  Islam  the  Nestorians  have,  in  some  meas- 


A  CONSTBUCTIVE  INTEEPEETATION      119 

ure,  borne  testimony  to  the  Sonship  of  Jesus  Christ  and 
to  His  claim  to  be  the  only  Redeemer.  And  so  preserved 
by  Him  throughout  these  centuries,  would  it  not  be  like 
God  to  use  this  very  people,  the  despised  remnant  of  His 
early  Church,  to  evangelize  those  from  whom  they  have 
suffered  so  much  ?  Is  there  not  a  Divine  logic  in  it  ?  The 
covenant  He  made  with  their  fathers  bespeaks  this  com- 
mission for  them,  that  they  may  fill  up  that  which  was 
lacking  in  the  service  of  those  fathers. 

"  But  granting  their  adaptedness  and  their  calling,  what 
prospect  is  there  of  the  Old  Church  community's  hearing 
the  call  and  obeying  it?  To-day,  if  not  dead,  they  are 
asleep  in  formalism.  Is  it  possible  that  they  can  be  re- 
vived and  reformed  and  equipped  and  so  be  used  of  God 
as  a  special  agency  for  the  evangelization  of  the  Kurds 
and  Arabs?  What  is  the  state  of  the  Nestorian  Church 
to-day  ?     What  does  it  promise  to  be  to-morrow  ? 

"  To  a  casual  observer  they  are  rude  and  wild  moun- 
taineers. They  are  illiterate  and  lawless.  In  religion 
they  are  formalists,  trusting  largely  to  fasts  and  ritual 
observance  for  salvation.  And  perhaps  most  discourag- 
ing, the  major  part  of  them  are  self-satisfied,  without 
ambition  for  better  things." 

But  over  against  this  are  their  reverence  for  books,  and 
for  the  Book  of  books,  their  deep  religious  feeling,  their 
capacity  for  education  and  evangelistic  service.  My 
friend  adds: 

"  Recall  what  Scotland  once  was,  a  land  of  blood  and 
rapine,  the  abode  of  ignorance  and  superstition.  And 
behold  it  to-day.  The  parallel  between  the  ancient  high- 
landers  of  Scotland  and  these  mountain  clans  of  Kurdi- 
stan is  a  close  one.  And  if  God  could  transform  a  Rob 
Roy  into  a  Henry  Drummond  or  a  David  Livingstone,  can 
He  not  do  as  much  with  these  highlanders  of  Kurdistan? 
There  is  the  same  Word  of  God  to  preach ;  there  is  only 
needed  the  faith  and  the  passionate  desire  of  John  Knox. 
There  is  much  to  argue  the  calling  of  the  Nestorians  and. 


120     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

whatever  their  condition  to-day,  we  cannot  doubt  but  that 
God  is  able  to  make  them  hear  that  call  and  obey  it/' 

What  was  has  not  wholly  ceased  to  be,  nor  shall.  Where 
the  Church  has  gone  there  is  something  that  was  not 
before  and  cannot  elsewhere  be — as  with  this  ancient 
Assyrian  Church,  the  possibility  of  a  new  life  and  the 
ancient  mission,  if  the  dreams  of  those  who  love  it  can 
be  fulfilled  and  its  light  be  not  extinguished  or  absorbed. 

And  lastly,  foreign  missions  rest  on  just  such  hopes  as 
these.  They  know  of  no  impossibilities.  The  pioneers 
going  out  alone  were  more  ludicrous  than  David  with  his 
little  sling  against  Goliath.  For  they  wrestle  not  with 
flesh  and  blood.  But  they  had  the  faith  which  the  Lord 
invited,  the  faith  which  can  remove  mountains  and  to 
which  nothing  is  impossible.  If  ever  the  world  was  war- 
ranted in  ridiculing  a  movement  for  the  disparity  of  its 
means  and  aims,  for  its  worldly  impotence,  for  its  illu- 
sions of  faith,  for  its  innocence,  for  its  childlike  magni- 
tudes of  ambition,  for  its  delusions  of  grandeur,  it  was 
warranted  when  Carey  and  queer  John  Thomas  set  forth 
for  India.  But  these  are  the  very  lessons  which  we  need 
to  learn  to-day,  that  there  is  no  impossible  duty,  that  noth- 
ing that  is  right  and  good  should  be  left  uncared  for,  that 
all  that  Christ  saw  in  humanity  is  there,  even  its  recover- 
ableness  from  all  its  waste  and  sin. 

This  is  what  foreign  missions  mean  to  us.  They  teach 
the  miracle  of  endless  possibility  in  the  world.  They 
have  been  the  miracle  of  an  ever  new  possibility  in  the 
Church.  They  are  a  guarantee  that  there  need  be  no  war. 
They  forerun  the  peaceable  kingdom  of  love. 


THE  WORLD'S  ABIDING  DEBT  TO  THE 
MISSIONARY 

THE  work  of  foreign  missions  is  not  in  need  of 
any  overstatements  in  order  to  support  its 
claim.  More  than  that,  any  exaggeration  is 
sure  to  injure  both  the  cause  and  its  advocates.  What  it 
cannot  claim  within  the  bounds  of  truth,  it  does  not  wish 
to  claim,  and  would  be  injured  by  claiming.  I  wish  to 
state  strongly  the  world's  debt  to  the  missionary,  but  I 
want  to  do  it  well  within  the  bounds  of  the  truth.  And 
to  give  assurance  that  no  careless  claims  are  to  be  made 
regarding  the  measures  of  the  world's  debt  to  the  mission- 
ary, I  wish  to  make  at  the  outset  three  preliminary  obser- 
vations. 

In  the  first  place,  the  missionary  enterprise  is  not  the 
only  agency  by  which  God  is  acting  upon  the  world.  We 
do  not  believe  that  commerce  and  diplomacy  and  civiliza- 
tion have  slipped  between  the  fingers  of  the  hands  of  God. 
We  do  not  believe  this,  because,  on  general  principle,  we 
believe  in  God's  sovereign  control  over  all  the  lives  of 
men.  And  we  do  not  believe  it  because,  particularly,  we 
can  see  throughout  the  world  the  manifest  way  In  which 
these  great  forces  are  playing  into  the  designs  of  God  in 
the  coming  of  His  Kingdom.  And  the  spirit  of  life  Is 
moving  out  over  the  world  also  in  far  more  subtle  ways 
than  these,  permeating  the  life  of  the  nations.  And  that 
spirit  of  life  we  believe  to  be  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God. 

121 


122     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

Not  all  that  is  being  done  in  the  world,  accordingly,  to- 
ward the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  being  done 
by  the  one  enterprise  of  foreign  missions. 

In  the  second  place,  the  missionary  enterprise  is  not  a 
perfect  and  faultless  enterprise.  How  could  it  be?  It 
went  out  from  us.  It  carries  with  it  to  the  mission  fields 
the  limitations  that  mark  the  life  of  the  Church  at  home ; 
it  represents  the  best  and  noblest  element  in  the  Church, 
but  just  so  far  as  that  element  falls  short  of  the  perfect 
embodiment  of  the  character  and  spirit  of  our  Lord  will 
the  missionary  enterprise  itself  be  imperfect  and  faulty. 
It  is  carried  on  by  men,  and  they  will  make  men's  mis- 
takes. 

In  the  third  place,  the  missionary  enterprise  is  not  seek- 
ing to  achieve  everything.  There  is  much  solicitude  on 
the  part  of  some  lest  the  Church  concern  herself  with  so- 
cial and  political  problems,  and  in  doing  so  forget  or  con- 
fuse her  distinctive  character  and  mission.  None  of  us 
need  feel  as  yet  too  great  apprehension  regarding  the  for- 
eign missionary  enterprise  in  this  regard.  It  is  aiming  at 
just  one  thing,  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  throughout  the 
world.  It  is  a  distinctly  religious  enterprise,  animated  by 
a  distinctly  religious  spirit,  aiming  at  a  distinctly  religious 
end,  and  it  is  accomplishing  all  that  it  is  accomplishing  in 
other  directions,  largely  because  it  does  not  make  these 
other  things  its  primary  aim  at  all,  but  goes  out  with  one 
supreme,  determining  and  all-embracing  religious  pur- 
pose. I  think  it  is  just  to  claim  that  the  missionary  enter- 
prise is  nevertheless  the  most  powerful,  the  purest,  the 
most  fruitful  agency  by  which  God  is  operating  greatly 
upon  the  world.  No  other  agency  that  is  affecting  the 
life  of  man  is  striking  that  life  with  so  deep  and  heavy  an 
impact;  is  pouring  into  it  so  purely,  with  so  little  con- 
tamination, the  living  stream  of  the  life  of  God ;  is  bearing 


THE  WOELD'S  ABIDING  DEBT  123 

so  rich  and  abundant  a  fruitage.  And  I  wish  to  try  to 
analyze  the  debt  which  the  world  owes  to  the  missionary 
and  to  his  enterprise. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  the  missionaiy  who  has  largely 
helped  to  open  the  world  to  us.  He  has  opened  up  a  good 
part  of  the  geography  of  the  world.  We  would  not  be 
knowing  it  to-day  as  we  do  if  it  were  not  for  him.  The 
whole  dark  continent  of  Africa  was  made  known  to  us 
chiefly  by  him.  And  this  is  true  not  only  of  Africa,  but 
of  Korea,  Manchuria,  China,  Burma,  Siam,  Arabia;  in 
fact,  almost  the  whole  of  Asia  has  laid  bare  its  inner  se- 
crets under  the  work  of  the  missionary.  We  owe  our 
knowledge  of  the  external  world  in  no  small  part  to  the 
missionary's  investigation. 

And  as  we  owe  our  knowledge  of  the  world's  geog- 
raphy to  him,  so  we  owe  much  of  our  knowledge  of  the 
world's  languages  and  its  literature.  In  some  lands  there 
is  no  literature  except  that  which  he  creates.  Morrison 
in  China,  Carey  in  India,  Hepburn  in  Japan,  Gale  in 
Korea,  were  the  men  who  first  gave  us  the  dictionaries 
of  the  great  languages  of  those  lands.  We  largely  owe 
our  knowledge  not  only  of  the  lands  in  which  they  live, 
but  also  of  the  languages  in  which  they  speak,  to  the  in- 
vestigations of  the  missionaries.  We  owe  to  them  our 
knowledge  of  social  customs  and  ideas.  In  the  words  of 
a  publication  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute :  "  The  contri- 
butions to  history,  to  ethnology,  to  philosophy,  to  geog- 
raphy and  religious  literature  form  a  lasting  monument  to 
their  fame."  We  have  penetrated  the  thoughts  of  all 
these  people,  because  the  missionary  has  lived  among 
them,  won  their  friendship,  and  exposed  their  minds. 

I  was  talking  recently  with  a  well-known  publisher  with 
reference  to  the  publication  of  a  missionary  book  by  one 
of  our  missionaries.     He  said  he  did  not  think  that  he 


124     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

could  take  it  without  some  guarantee.  And  I  asked  him 
why.  He  said  because  missionary  books  do  not  sell  as 
well  now  as  they  did  a  few  years  ago,  and  he  said  he 
thought  it  was  partly  due  to  the  great  mass  of  missionary 
books  sent  out  by  the  missionary  organizations  through 
study  classes,  but  even  more  to  the  fact  that  twenty-five 
years  ago  we  were  dependent  for  almost  all  our  knowl- 
edge of  these  non-Christian  lands  upon  the  missionaries, 
who  were  the  pioneer  explorers,  while  nov/  a  great  many 
others  have  followed  in  behind  them  and  a  nev/  literature 
has  grown  up  where  formerly  we  had  missionary  books 
alone.  It  was  the  publisher's  unconscious  testimony  to 
the  world's  debt  to  the  exploring  missionary  for  the  open- 
ing up  of  the  treasures  of  the  world's  knowledge. 

And  not  only  has  the  missionary  given  us  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  world,  and  is  giving  us  our  deepest  and  most 
sympathetic  knowledge  of  the  world  even  to  this  day,  but 
in  the  second  place  the  missionary  has  taken  something  to 
these  lands,  which  he  has  spread  over  these  lands.  Wher- 
ever he  has  gone  he  has  carried  peace,  order  and  civiliza- 
tion with  him.  He  has  done  it  among  the  savage  races  of 
the  world.  Nothing  could  be  clearer  than  Darwin's  testi- 
mony to  the  transforming  power  of  the  missionary's 
work.  Regarding  missions  in  Terra  del  Fuego,  he  said  : 
"  The  lesson  of  the  missionary  is  the  magician's  wand," 
and  to  the  South  American  Society  he  wrote :  "  The  suc- 
cess of  the  mission  is  most  wonderful,  and  charms  me,  as 
I  always  prophesied  utter  failure.  It  is  a  grand  success ; 
I  shall  feel  proud  if  your  committee  think  fit  to  elect  me 
an  honourary  member  of  your  society."  The  name  of 
Darwin  suggests  that  of  A.  L.  Wallace,  who  wrote  of  the 
Celebes :  "  The  missionaries  have  much  to  be  proud  of  in 
this  country.  They  have  assisted  the  Government  in 
changing  a  savage  into  a  civilized  community  in  a  won- 


THE  WOELD^S  ABIDING  DEBT  125 

derfully  short  space  of  time.  Forty  years  ago  the  coun- 
try was  a  wilderness,  the  people  naked  savages,  furnishing 
their  rude  homes  with  human  heads.  Now  it  is  a  gar- 
den ! "  And  not  only  are  scattered  people  like  these  in 
the  remote  and  forgotten  pockets  of  the  world  trans- 
formed, but  in  the  dark  corners  of  Africa  it  is  the  mis- 
sionary's influence  that  has  wrought  beyond  all  power  of 
government,  in  impressing  the  deepest  life  of  the  people. 
Sir  Harry  Johnston,  who  is  one  of  the  greatest  adminis- 
trators in  Africa,  said  not  long  ago :  "  When  the  history 
of  the  great  African  States  of  the  future  comes  to  be 
written,  the  arrival  of  the  first  missionary  will,  with  many 
of  these  new  nations,  be  the  first  historical  event  in  their, 
annals."  And  even  of  the  great  and  well-governed  land 
of  India,  the  same  was  to  be  said  by  Sir  W.  Mackworth 
Young,  after  his  return  to  Great  Britain,  from  the  Lieu- 
tenant-Governorship of  the  Punjab:  "  As  a  business  man 
speaking  to  business  men,"  said  he,  "  I  am  prepared  to  say 
that  the  work  which  has  been  done  by  missionary  agency 
in  India  exceeds  in  importance  all  that  has  been  done,  and 
much  has  been  done,  by  the  British  Government  in  India 
since  its  commencement.  Let  me  take  the  province  which 
I  know  best.  I  ask  myself  what  has  been  the  most  potent 
influence  working  among  the  people  since  annexation 
fifty-four  years  ago,  and  to  that  question  I  feel  there  is 
but  one  answer — Christianity,  as  set  forth  in  the  lives  and 
teachings  of  Christian  missionaries.  I  do  not  underesti- 
mate," he  went  on,  "  the  forces  that  have  been  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  Punjab  by  the  British  Government,  but  I 
am  convinced  that  the  effect  on  native  character  pro- 
duced by  the  self-denying  labours  of  missionaries  is  far 
greater.  The  Punjab  bears  on  its  historical  roll  the 
names  of  some  great  Christian  statesmen,  men  who  have 
honoured  God  by  their  lives,  and  endeared  themselves  to 


126     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  "WOBLD 

the  people  by  their  self-denying  work,  but  I  am  convinced 
that  if  they  could  speak  to  us  out  of  the  great  unknown 
there  is  not  one  of  them  who  would  not  proclaim  that  the 
work  done  by  men  like  French,  Clark,  Newton  and  For- 
man,  who  went  in  and  out  among  the  people  for  a  whole 
generation  or  more,  preached  by  their  lives  the  nobility  of 
self-sacrifice,  and  the  lesson  of  love  to  God  and  man,  was 
a  higher  and  nobler  work,  and  more  far-reaching  in  its 
consequence."  And  we  recall  the  equally  significant  lan- 
guage of  John  Lawrence  himself,  who  declared  that,  how- 
ever much  the  British  Government  had  done  for  India,  he 
was  convinced  that  the  missionary  had  done  more  to 
benefit  India  than  all  other  agencies  combined.  The  same 
thing  might  be  said  of  China.  It  is  true  we  do  not  seem 
to  have  very  deeply  penetrated  the  lives  of  the  four  hun- 
dred millions  of  that  land,  but  I  suspect  that  we  have 
penetrated  deeper  than  it  seems,  and  one  recalls  the  words 
of  the  Viceroy  Tuan  Fang  at  the  dinner  given  the  Chinese 
Embassy  in  New  York  several  years  ago,  when  he  recog- 
nized what  the  missionaries  had  done  in  their  schools  and 
colleges  and  added,  as  he  closed :  "  And  I  think  the  mis- 
sionaries will  find  China  not  ungrateful  for  what  they 
have  done  for  her."  This  is  the  second  great  debt  of  the 
world  to  the  Christian  missionary. 

In  the  third  place,  for  many  generations  the  world's 
diplomacy  was  practically  dependent  upon  missionaries. 
We  were  unable  to  carry  on  our  intercourse  with  the  Ori- 
ental people  without  the  assistance  of  the  missionaries.  I 
read  a  little  while  ago  a  letter  from  Caleb  Gushing,  as 
Secretary  of  State,  regarding  Bridgman  and  Parker, 
early  American  missionaries,  in  which  he  wrote  acknowl- 
edging the  obligation  of  the  Government  to  them,  and 
added :  "  The  great  bulk  of  the  general  information  we 
possess  and  nearly  the  whole  of  the  primary  philological 


THE  WOELD^S  ABIDING  DEBT  127 

information  regarding  the  language  of  China  are  derived 
through  the  missionaries."  And  after  the  Arrow  war 
Mr.  Reed,  the  American  Minister,  declared  his  debt  to 
Dr.  W.  A.  P.  Martin :  "  Without  the  missionaries  as  in- 
terpreters, the  public  business  could  not  be  transacted.  I 
could  not,  but  for  their  aid,  have  advanced  one  step  in  the 
discharge  of  my  duties  here,  or  read  or  written  or 
understood  one  word  of  correspondence  or  stipulation." 
And  when  Stephen  Mattoon  was  representing  the  Presby- 
terian Church  in  Siam,  and  the  time  came  to  establish  our 
diplomatic  relations  with  the  Siamese,  Dr.  Wood,  the 
head  of  the  Embassy,  wrote  back  to  the  United  States 
Government,  and  said :  "  It  was  very  evident  that  much 
of  the  apprehension  they  felt  in  taking  upon  themselves 
the  responsibilities  of  a  treaty  with  us  would  be  dimin- 
ished if  they  could  have  the  Rev.  Mr.  Mattoon  as  the  first 
United  States  Consul  to  set  the  treaty  in  motion."  Of 
all  relationships  between  Eastern  and  Western  nations  in 
the  last  century,  none  have  been  more  free  from  friction 
and  misunderstanding  than  those  that  have  prevailed  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  Siam,  and  I  believe  it  is 
largely  due  to  the  character  given  to  those  relations  by 
the  hand  of  the  missionary,  trusted  by  his  own  land,  and 
beloved  by  the  Siamese.  And  that  is  the  third  debt  of  the 
world  to  the  missionary. 

In  the  fourth  place  we  owe  the  missionary  a  great 
debt  for  having  done  something  to  atone  for  the  moral 
shame  of  our  Western  contact  with  the  East.  I  do  not 
propose  to  go  into  details,  but  it  is  well  to  turn  some  time 
and  read  in  Kidd's  "  Control  of  the  Tropics,"  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  effect  on  Westerners  of  life  in  those  lands, 
especially  the  tropical  lands  of  Asia  and  Africa.  Most  of 
us  have  no  idea  of  the  shameful  record  that  has  been 
made  by  a  great  multitude  who  have  gone  out  represent- 


128     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

ing  our  Western  nations.  There  have  been  many  noble 
men  in  commerce  and  in  government  service,  and  there 
have  been  some  v^hose  Uves  were  a  loathsome  affront  to 
Christian  civilization.  The  missionary  has  done  some- 
thing at  least  to  mitigate  our  shame.  He  has  done 
something,  at  least,  by  his  pure  and  high  life  to  correct 
in  the  mind  of  the  heathen  world  the  idea  that  the  Chris- 
tian ethics  are  inferior  to  the  ethics  of  the  pagan  lands. 
We  owe  no  small  debt  to  the  missionary  on  this  account, 
and  yet  it  is  just  on  this  account  that  moral  delinquents 
from  the  West  dislike  him. 

In  the  fifth  place,  we  owe  it  to  the  missionary  that  the 
whole  attitude  of  Western  nations  to  the  heathen  nations 
has  been  transformed.  One  hundred  years  ago,  if  any 
Western  nation  wanted  to  go  out  and  take  a  slice  of  the 
world,  it  went  and  took  it,  and  did  not  feel  called  upon 
to  justify  itself.  But  now,  if  any  land  wants  to  take 
land  elsewhere,  it  has  to  set  up  some  missionary  reason 
for  its  doing  so.  There  was  a  time  when  the  Eastern 
people  seemed  likely  to  be  not  the  white  man's  burden, 
but  the  white  man's  beast  of  burden.  What  wrought  the 
change?  What  has  given  to  the  West  the  sense  of 
responsibility  for  those  Eastern  people?  Nothing  so 
much  as  the  unselfish  movement  embodied  in  the  mis- 
sionary, who  has  helped  to  lead  the  Western  world  into 
a  radically  new  attitude  to  the  weaker  peoples. 

In  the  sixth  place,  it  has  been  the  missionary  agency 
which  has  in  good  part  launched,  and  which  is  neces- 
sary to  direct,  those  great  movements  of  life  which  are 
astir  in  Africa  and  Asia  in  our  day.  These  lands  are 
no  longer  asleep.  A  book  appeared  not  long  ago  en- 
titled, "  The  Unchanging  East."  There  could  not  be  a 
more  complete  misnomer  than  that.  You  might  talk 
about  the  unchanging  United  States,  but  not  the  un- 


THE  WORLD'S  ABIDING  DEBT  129 

changing  East.  The  whole  of  Asia  and  Africa  is  astir 
with  the  thrill  of  a  new  life,  and  it  was  the  missionaiy 
movement  largely  that  started  that  life.  We  can  hardly 
agree  with  what  some  have  said  that  we  have  scarcely 
as  yet  made  any  impression  on  the  non-Christian  world. 
It  is  seething  to-day  with  new  forces,  and  the  agency  that 
in  no  sm.ail  measure  started  those  forces  has  been  the 
moral  and  spiritual  influence  of  that  great  enterprise 
which  we  have  had  planted  now  for  more  than  one 
hundred  years,  and  which  has  been  sending  the  thrill  of  a 
vivifying  life  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
non-Christian  world.  The  first  college  and  press  that 
were  established  in  India,  China,  Korea,  Siam  and  Persia 
were  established  by  missionaries.  The  modern  educa- 
tional system  of  India  sprang  from  William  Carey,  Alex- 
ander Duff,  and  Macaulay,  influenced  by  Duff.  That 
mighty  tide  of  life  that  is  seething  through  India  from 
east  to  west  and  north  to  south  runs  back  to  the  influence 
of  the  missionary  enterprise.  I  believe,  too,  that  in  a  real 
measure  the  same  thing  is  true  about  Japan.  The  Iwa- 
kura  Embassy  was  conceived  by  Guido  Verbeck.  He 
suggested  that  Embassy,  he  had  the  selection  of  a  few 
of  the  representatives.  It  was  the  return  of  the  Embassy 
that  led  forward  the  tremendous  upheaval  and  transfor- 
mation of  Japan.  And,  as  for  China,  more  than  any 
other  single  agency,  I  believe  the  educational  enterprise 
of  the  missionaries,  and  the  thousands  of  missionaries 
and  native  Christians  operating  in  obscure  places,  preach- 
ing Christ,  telling  truths,  planting  deep  the  seeds  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  have  been  the  great  moral  agency  in 
the  upheaval  of  the  four  hundred  millions  of  the  Chinese 
people. 

And  just  as  the  missionary  enterprise  has  been  one 
of  the  largest  agencies  in  launching  these  movements  of 


130     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

life,  so  it  is  indispensable  to  guide  and  control  them. 
They  cannot  go  forward  to  God's  goal  without  a  moral 
principle  or  basis.  If  they  are  the  movements  of  Christ 
they  require  Christ's  hand  upon  them,  giving  them  direc- 
tion and  guiding  them  to  their  right  end.  I  believe  the 
people  of  the  East  are  themselves  coming  to  recognize 
this.  Some  years  ago  that  most  influential  of  the 
Japanese  statesmen.  Prince  Ito,  declared  he  had  no  sym- 
pathy with  religion,  that  it  was  only  superstition.  Not 
long  before  his  lamented  death  in  a  dinner  given  by  him- 
self to  a  little  group  of  men  he  took  back  his  own  words. 
One  wishes  he  had  amended  his  own  life,  but  it  is  a 
great  thing  for  him  to  have  amended  his  theory — when 
he  said  that  he  had  come  to  realize  that  morality  was 
absolutely  indispensable  to  civilization  and  that  religion 
was  absolutely  indispensable  to  morality.  And  there  is 
only  one  religion  that  can  furnish  the  world  with  an 
adequate  moral  ideal  and  power.  The  missionary  is  the 
custodian  of  it  and  through  him  the  purest  influence  is 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  moving  currents  of  life  through- 
out the  non-Christian  world. 

In  the  seventh  place,  the  Church  at  home  owes  the 
missionary  a  supreme  debt.  He  has  confirmed  and 
strengthened  for  her  her  pure  and  simple  evangelical 
conviction.  We  might  have  lost  here  at  home  the  pure 
old  faith  of  the  Gospel  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  foreign 
missionary  enterprise.  The  very  act  of  spreading  Chris- 
tianity solidifies  our  confidence  in  it  as  worth  spreading. 
If  it  is  not  worth  spreading  it  will  not  be  able  to  convince 
men  that  it  is  worth  retaining.  A  religion  that  is  not  so 
good  that  it  requires  its  possessor  to  share  it  with  all 
mankind  will  not  long  be  able  to  convince  its  possessor  that 
it  is  worth  his  while  to  keep  it  for  himself.  The  very 
fact  that  for  one  hundred  years  now  we  have  had  a 


THE  WOELD'S  ABIDING  DEBT  131 

great  enterprise  communicating  Christianity  to  the  world 
has  confirmed  us  in  our  convictions  that  Christianity  is 
worth  our  while  at  home.  But  not  in  that  way  only  has 
the  missionary  retained  in  us  the  purity  of  our  evangelical 
conviction.  The  unemasculated  vigour  of  the  Gospel  there 
has  toned  and  braced  us  here.  I  remember  in  Korea 
hearing  the  Korean  Christians  singing  all  over  the  land 
what  was  then,  and  what  I  suppose  is  now,  their  favourite 
hymn.  I  have  seen  them  gathered  by  day  and  night,  with 
a  preacher  in  the  midst  of  the  village  people,  whom  he 
was  never  to  see  again,  teaching  them  to  sing  his  hymn: 
"  What  will  wash  my  sins  away ;  nothing  but  the  blood  of 
Jesus."  And  the  discovery  all  over  the  world  that  nothing 
but  the  blood  of  Jesus  will  wash  away  the  sins  of  the  non- 
Christian  world ;  that  nothing  but  the  Divine  power  of  a 
supernatural  Christ  will  save  men  and  keep  them  saved, 
that  very  discovery  has  reacted  upon  the  Church  at 
home  to  draw  us  nearer  in  the  simplicity  and  earnestness 
of  our  faith,  to  the  pure  evangelical  conviction  once  and 
once  for  all  delivered. 

More  than  that,  the  missionaries  have  seen  a  living 
God  at  work  among  the  nations.  We  may  have  been 
blinded  here  at  home  to  the  evidence  of  the  Divine  King 
ruling  over  human  society.  We  may  have  had  doubts 
and  discouragements  as  to  whether,  after  all,  the  Gospel 
had  any  more  than  a  human  moral  appeal.  But  the 
missionary  has  seen  results  produced,  not  to  be  explained 
on  any  human  grounds,  results  only  explicable  as  men 
have  seen  back  of  them  the  living  and  personal  interven- 
tion of  the  same  God  who  spoke  to  the  fathers  through 
the  prophets,  and  who  came  and  stood  in  the  world  in 
the  person  of  His  Son.  The  missionary  enterprise  also 
has  kept  us  aware  of  the  fact  that  we  are  engaged  in  a 
great  effort,  that  Christianity  proposes  to  displace  the 


132     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

otiier  religions  of  the  world;  that  it  is  not  a  religion  that 
will  make  any  compromise  with  atheism  in  southern  India, 
or  atheism  in  Iowa,  unitarianism  in  Japan  or  unitarianism 
in  England,  but  a  religion  that  has  set  out  on  a  great 
conflict,  and  that  does  not  intend  to  make  terms  with 
any  foes  until  at  last  it  has  subdued  them  and  won  a 
complete  victory  for  its  King.  We  owe  to  the  missionary 
enterprise  this  confirmation  of  the  pure  evangelical  con- 
viction of  the  Church. 

In  the  eighth  place,  we  owe  it  to  the  foreign  mission- 
ary that  he  has  brought  to  us  a  mighty  inspiration.  He 
i  as  brought  to  the  Church  and  the  world  alike  the  in- 
spiration of  a  great  idea,  the  idea  of  a  whole  humanity 
redeemed  and  gathered  into  one  great  kingdom  of 
brotherliness  and  love.  Bishop  Thoburn  has  reminded 
us  that,  after  all,  at  the  bottom  of  its  heart,  the  world 
is  grateful  to  the  missionary  enterprise  for  this.  In  Cal- 
cutta, he  says,  not  one  man  in  a  thousand  who  comes 
there  from  the  West  ever  asks  to  be  shown  t^e  house 
where  Thackeray  was  born;  not  one  man  in  a  hundred 
wants  to  be  shown  where  Macaulay  lived,  but  almost  every 
one  asks  to  be  carried  out  to  the  burying-ground  of  Ser- 
ampore,  where  lies  the  body  of  the  English  cobbler,  who 
relearned  and  retaught  the  world  the  glory  of  a  world- 
wide service.  The  missionary  enterprise  has  kept  before 
the  Church  and  the  world  alike  the  inspiration  o^  a  great 
ideal,  of  a  great  and  dauntless  daring. 

In  his  chapter  on  "  The  Character  of  Jesus,"  Horace 
Bushnell  refers  to  the  fact  that  the  way  in  which  Jesus 
Christ  sat  down  in  front  of  a  universal  and  perpetual 
project  shows  Him  to  be  something  more  than  a  man. 
That  is  what  the  modern  missionary  enterprise  has  done; 
it  sat  down  in  front  of  a  whole  world  of  men,  more  than 
a  century  ago,  when  that  world  was  absolutely  unknown, 


THE  WORLD'S  ABIDING  DEBT  133 

when  there  was  no  access  to  the  great  majority  of  its 
people,  when  there  was  no  knowledge  of  the  problems  that 
must  be  confronted.  When  all  things  must  be  built  up 
from  the  beginning,  the  missionary  enterprise  unfearingly 
faced  its  task.    And  it  is  not  afraid  to-day. 

It  has  held  out  before  the  Church  and  the  world  the 
inspiration  of  a  great  courage,  and  it  is  holding  out  be- 
fore us  now  the  inspiration  of  a  great  unselfishness.  I 
said  good-bye  some  time  ago  in  our  missionary  rooms  to  an 
old  friend  just  going  back  to  China.  He  had  gone  out 
a  few  years  ago  taking  with  him  his  young  wife ;  she  had 
died  there  of  cholera,  and  he  had  come  home  with  his 
little  motherless  babe,  and  was  leaving  his  little  one  with 
his  mother  here;  many  influences  were  brought  to  bear 
to  retain  him  here ;  he  was  going  back  with  the  touch  of 
his  little  child's  fingers  upon  his  heart,  and  he  was  going 
alone,  once  more  to  his  task  in  southern  China.  And  as 
I  shook  hands  with  him  as  he  went  away  I  was  grateful 
to  God  ^r  association  with  an  enterprise  in  which  men 
are  so  willing  to  lay  down  everything  in  the  name  and  for 
the  sake  of  Jesus  Christ ;  v»^here  the  same  spirit  that  filled 
Him,  who,  though  He  was  in  the  form  of  God,  counted 
not  equality  with  God  a  prize  to  be  jealously  retained, 
but  made  Himself  of  no  reputation,  and  took  upon  Him 
the  form  of  a  servant  and  became  obedient  unto  death, 
even  the  death  of  the  cross,  had  gained  and  was  gaining 
still  the  utter  surrender  of  the  hearts  of  men.  There 
comes  back  to  mind  the  description  in  the  life  of  Mackay, 
of  his  last  meeting  with  Stanley.  Stanley  had  suggested 
Mackay's  coming  away  with  him,  and  he  had  refused  and 
Stanley  looking  back  saw  still  the  yellow-haired,  blue- 
eyed  Scotchman,  standing  there  unwilling  to  leave,  then 
turning  back  to  the  task  that  was  so  near  done,  but 
refusing  for  self's  sake  to  forego  the  privilege  of  laying 


134     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

down  self  in  the  service  and  for  the  sake  of  Christ.  We 
owe  it  to  the  missionary  that  he  has  held  up  before  us 
still,  in  this  selfish  time,  the  picture  and  object  lesson, 
the  high  appeal  of  great,  inspiring,  heroic  unselfishness  in 
the  ministry  not  of  war  but  of  peace. 

Last  of  all,  it  is  the  missionary  who  is  leading  the 
Church  on  to  unity,  who  is  showing  us  how  much  the 
things  in  which  we  agree  outweigh  the  things  in  which 
we  disagree.  The  things  in  which  we  agree,  how  vastly 
greater  they  are  than  the  things  in  which  we  differ.  The 
missionary  enterprise  as  it  leads  the  Church  out  against 
its  immense  task  shows  us  how  much  more  He,  the  Lord, 
who  leads  us,  and  how  much  more  His  Kingdom,  the 
goal  we  have  in  view,  more  than  outweigh  all  the  things 
that  still  keep  us  asunder. 

It  has  been  the  missionary  enterprise  that  has  been 
demonstrating  to  us  and  for  us  the  necessity  and  the  pos- 
sibility of  union.  Here  in  this  Christian  land,  surrounded 
by  all  the  influences  of  Christianity,  we  are  many;  out 
there,  surrounded  by  the  influences  of  paganism,  we  are 
becoming  one.  Are  the  influences  of  paganism  to  be 
superior  to  the  influences  of  Christianity?  Are  we  able 
in  the  midst  of  that  atmosphere,  to  bind  ourselves  in  unity 
for  the  accomplishment  of  our  great  ends,  Christ's  great 
ends  for  us,  while  we  are  still  unable  to  do  so  here  at 
home?  It  is  the  missionary  who  has  been  leading  the 
army  of  Christ  into  one. 

And  it  is  the  missionary  who  has  been  leading  the 
world,  also,  to  unity.  He  is  the  greatest  agency  in  bind- 
ing the  dissevered  fragments  of  our  human  race  into  one. 
He  is  doing  it  first  of  all  by  exemplifying  brotherhood 
and  democracy.  Other  people  are  talking  brotherhood; 
the  missionary  is  actualizing  it;  other  people  are  saying 
what  a  beautiful  dream  it  is;  the  missionary  is  realizing 


THE  WOELD'S  ABIDING  DEBT  135 

it.    In  a  recent  report  of  one  of  our  medical  missionaries 
in  India  he  told  of  having  taken  a  Mohammedan  into 
his  own  house,  and  stayed  with  him  day  by  day,  until 
at  last,  nursing  him  himself,  he  had  made  him  well  and 
sent  him  on  his  way.    He  was  followed  by  another  man 
full  of  disease;  the  missionary  was  unable  to  care  for 
him  in  the  hospital,  and  he  took  him,  too,  into  his  own 
home.    During  the  hot  months  of  June  and  July  he  slept 
with  him  under  the  stars,  side  by  side,  that  he  might 
nurse  him  with  his  own  hands,  and  when  he  had  to  go  oif 
to  a  distant  city  he  took  him  along,  that  he  might  care 
for  him,  and  brought  him  back  to  his  own  station,  where 
in  the  month  of  July  the  patient  died.     He  missed  him 
when  he  was  gone.     "  It  is  wonderful  how  your  heart 
gets  near  to  a  man  when  you  try  to  help  him,  and  try  to 
be  a  brother  to  him."    So  he  spoke  of  it.    It  is  the  mis- 
sionary all  over  the  world  who  is  making  the  greatest 
contribution  to  the  unity  of  the  world  by  manifesting  in 
his  own  life  the  spirit  of  brotherhood. 

And  the  missionary  is  making  a  contribution— and  it  is 
no  petty  contribution— to  the  unity  of  the  world,  by  his 
advocacy  of  the  principle  of  freedom  of  thought  and  re- 
ligious toleration.  There  is  no  true  unity  except  unity 
in  liberty.  And  the  missionary  is  making  a  contribution, 
which  the  next  generation  will  appreciate  far  better 
than  ours,  to  world  unity,  as  he  goes  out  everywhere, 
acquainting  men  with  this  principle,  and  slowly  winning 
its  incorporation  in  their  national  life.  It  is  easy  to-day 
to  criticize  S.  Wells  Williams  for  the  part  he  played  in 
securing  the  incorporation  of  the  toleration  clauses  in 
the  early  treaties  with  China,  and  to  say  that  great  evils 
have  flowed  from  the  political  privileges  obtained  then 
for  Chinese  Christians.  There  have  been  abuses;  per- 
haps Christianity  should  have  been  left  untolerated,  but 


136     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

I  am  not  sure  that  generations  hence  men  will  not  look 
back  with  a  calm  view  over  history  and  regard  that  as 
one  of  the  greatest  contributions  the  missionary  has  made 
to  China*s  progress.  At  any  rate  it  has  been  the  mis- 
sionary everywhere  throughout  the  world  who  has  been 
preaching  love  and  unity  as  against  hate  and  disagree- 
ment. Here  in  our  own  land  we  hear  the  mutterings  of 
racial  hate  and  discord.  But  all  the  world  over  mis- 
sionaries believe  that  God  has  made  of  one  blood  all 
the  races  of  men;  that  no  different  coloured  blood 
runs  through  the  Japanese  or  Chinese  from  that  which 
runs  through  our  ov/n  veins,  and  that  the  same  blood 
which  was  shed  on  Calvary  for  us  men  of  white  faces, 
was  shed  also  for  those  men  of  yellow  faces  across  the 
sea.  The  missionary  has  been  contributing  to  world 
unity  by  preaching  this  message  of  equality  and  of  love. 

We  little  understand  the  depth  of  the  racial  hatred 
that  has  sprung  from  the  seed  that  has  been  sown  in 
the  past;  how  intense  has  been  the  bitterness  of  the 
Eastern  nations  against  the  West;  and  alas,  they  have 
had  cause  enough  for  their  bitterness.  If  our  land  had 
been  seized  by  Asiatic  people,  as  China  was  seized  by 
the  Western  people,  there  would  have  been  an  uprising 
in  comparison  to  which  the  Boxer  uprising  was  as  "  the 
fading  dews  of  the  morning  before  the  roaring  flood." 
The  Asiatic  world  has  its  long  bill  of  grievances  against 
the  West.  Let  us  thank  God  we  have  our  representatives 
there  who  are  preaching  love  and  unity ;  who  are  teaching 
a  nobler  principle  than  Mr.  Townsend's  unbridgeable  gulf 
between  East  and  West,  who  know  that  all  gulfs  are 
closed  by  the  love  of  Christ  and  the  unity  of  His  body. 
"  If  ever,"  said  Bishop  Welldon  at  Oxford,  when  he  came 
back  from  India,  (I  do  not  quote  him  exactly),  "  If  ever 
I  felt  that  the  chasm  between  the  East  and  the  West — 


THE  WORLD'S  ABIDING  DEBT  137 

and  it  is  more  terrible  than  I  ever  dreamed  before  I  went 
out — could  be  bridged,  it  was  when  I  saw  men  of  different 
nations  kneeling  down  together  at  the  sacramental  table 
of  our  Lord."    The  only  thing  that  is  going  to  save  the 
world  from  a  bitter  strife,  vaster  and  more  terrible  than 
anything  the  world  has  known  for  ages  past,  is  the  unity 
of  men  in  one  Lord,  one  faith,  one  God  and  Father  of 
all,  who  is  in  all,  over  and  through  all.     And  it  is  be- 
cause the  missionary   represents   that,   and  because  he 
is    embodying    this    saving    principle    in    the    life    of 
the  world  that  we  stand  in  debt  to  him  as  to  no  other 
man.     He,  more  than  any  other,  will  bring  in  the  day, 
the  great  day  of  which  Tennyson  dreamed,  in  which 
universal  love  shall  be  each  man's  law,  and  universal  light 
shall  not  only  lie  like  a  shaft  of  light  across  the  land,  and 
like  a  lane  of  beams  across  the  sea,  through  the  cycle  of 
the  golden  year,  but  rather,  shine  with  all  the  covering 
radiance  of  Christ  on  all  the  lands  and  seas;  because 
at  last  there  shall  have  come  through  him,  more  than 
through  any  other,  that  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth  which 
will  be  like  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  high,  where  there 
shall  be  no  darkness  any  more,  because  the  Lamb  Him- 
self is  the  light  thereof.    And  to  whom  in  that  day  shall 
the  first  and  most  grateful  words  be  spoken,  when  at 
last  His  Kingdom  shall  have  come,  and  His  will  shall 
have  been  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  Heaven,  but  to  the 
missionary  doing  his  work  in  his  lowliness  and  in  his 
meekness  to-day,  but  recognized  in  his  glory  and  his 
power  then—"  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant ;  by 
thee  I  wrought  this  "  ? 


VI 

THE   CHRISTIANIZING   OF   THE   IMPACT   OF 
THE  WEST  UPON  THE  EAST 

THE  impact  of  the  West  upon  the  East  we  have 
already  said  must  be  Christianized.  We  imply, 
then,  that  it  has  not  been  Christian.  Are  we 
prepared  to  admit  this  ?  Without  qualification,  we  should 
not  do  so.  The  net  result  of  the  dealings  of  the  so-called 
Christian  nations  with  the  non-Christian  world,  with  all 
the  evil  that  has  seamed  and  defaced  that  contact,  has 
been  for  good.  We  believe  this  for  two  reasons:  First,  / 
because  we  believe  in  God  and  that  God  has  been  govern- 
ing the  world,  and  that  He  has  not  allowed  these  relations 
between  the  different  races  of  men  to  arise  without  Him- 
self participating  in  them,  and  seeing  to  it  that  the  pur- 
poses of  good  which  He  had  formed  for  men  were  not 
altogether  frustrated.  We  are  sure  that  in  spite  of  the 
evil  that  we  see  through  the  world,  the  development  of 
man's  life  has  not  escaped  the  control  of  God,  and  that 
in  the  ages  past  He  has  been  leading  on  His  world.  We 
believe  it  in  the  second  place  because  we  can  see  all 
through  the  non-Christian  world  the  penetrating  and  cre- 
ative influence  of  great  Christian  principles.  It  is  not 
the  same  heathen  world  on  which  we  look  out  to-day 
that  our  fathers  knew  one  hundred  years  ago.  Christian 
principles  of  morality,  equality  and  justice  and  the  Chris- 
tian idea  of  God  have  been  slowly  making  their  way  into 

138 


THE  IMPACT  OP  WEST  UPON  EAST       139 

the  thought  of  mankind.  Deeply  as  we  lament  all  the  evil 
that  has  defaced  our  past  relations  with  the  East,  we 
still  rejoice  that  God  has  overruled  this,  and  that  we 
ourselves  can  see  the  slow  fashioning  of  the  nations  to 
a  better  and  truer  life. 

But  when  we  have  said  this,  then  we  are  prepared  to 
admit  that  there  are  still,  as  there  have  been  in  the  past, 
large  non-Christian  elements  in  the  impact  of  the  West 
upon  the  East  which  must  be  Christianized.  We  recog- 
nize clearly,  and  confess  with  shame,  that  in  our  political 
contact  with  the  non-Christian  world  there  have  been 
radically  non-Christian  elements.  There  is  no  room  here 
to  make  the  detailed  confession.  The  great  wrongs  from 
which  the  Chinese  Empire  suffered  before  the  Boxer 
uprising  are  a  sufficient  evidence  of  the  non-Christian 
character  of  much  of  our  dealing  with  the  non-Christian 
world.  I  recall  an  article  in  the  Nippon  Shimhun  of 
Japan  some  years  ago  commenting  on  the  curious  notions 
of  humanity  and  honesty  displayed  by  the  West  toward 
China  in  the  proceedings  which  led  up  to  the  Boxer  storm. 
The  Japan  Mail  summarized  the  article  at  the  time : 

"  The  ethics  of  Westerners  are  to  the  Nippon  very  in- 
explicable. It  proceeds  to  quote  Chwang  tze  on  the 
European  politicians.  The  sage  was  asked  whether  mo- 
rality existed  among  thieves.  He  replied  much  as  follows : 
*  Is  there  any  place  morality  does  not  exist  ?  The  five 
virtues  are  all  exemplified  by  thieves.  In  perceiving  that 
there  are  treasures  in  people's  houses  they  show  sagacity. 
In  each  striving  to  be  first  to  get  into  a  house  they  dis- 
play courage.  In  not  striving  to  be  the  first  to  escape 
from  a  house  they  show  a  regard  for  what  is  right.  In 
determining  whether  a  house  should  be  entered  or  not 
they  display  intelligence;  and  in  the  consideration  they 
show  to  each  other  in  dividing  the  spoil  they  display 
benevolence.  Without  these  five  virtues  no  big  robbery 
would  succeed.'    This  applies  to  the  doings  of  Europeans 


140     THE  GOSPEL  AKD  THE  KEW  AYOELD 

on  the  neighbouring  continent.  If  this  conduct  is  to  be 
the  standard  of  humanity,  a  pretty  low  level  will  be 
reached." 

And  Dr.  Kato,  of  the  Imperial  University  in  Tokyo, 
discussing  at  the  same  time  the  evolution  of  morality 
and  law,  held  that  the  example  of  Western  states  shows 
that  they  do  not  recognize  any  universal  ethical  principles, 
and  are  indeed  unqualifiedly  un-Christian  in  their  dealing 
with  alien  nations.  When  a  great  empire  had  practically 
not  a  single  port  left  in  which  she  could  anchor  her  own 
fleet  along  thousands  of  miles  of  seacoast  without  getting 
the  consent  of  a  foreign  power;  when  she  heard  the 
whole  world  talking  about  her  dismemberment  and  the 
partition  of  her  territory  among  foreign  nations,  we  can- 
not wonder  that  that  nation  and  the  neighbouring  nations 
failed  to  discern  in  the  political  attitude  of  the  West  a 
Christian  spirit  toward  the  non-Christian  world.  And 
while  respect  for  ethical  ideals  has  been  deepened  in  both 
the  East  and  the  West  in  connection  with  the  war  there 
has  been  wide-spread  conviction  in  Asia  that  political 
conduct  and  especially  the  issues  of  the  war  for  Asia  have 
not  been  conformed  to  those  ideals. 

In  the  second  place,  there  have  been  great  un-Christian 
elements  in  our  trade  impact  on  the  non-Christian  world. 
Pne  needs  only  to  recall  the  slave  traffic,  a  thing  of  the 
past  now,  but  with  its  memories  still  living.  One  needs 
only  to  remember  that  little  canoe  drifting  out  from 
shore  to  sea  in  v/hich  the  body  of  Coleridge  Patteson  was 
lying  with  five  wounds  upon  it,  like  the  wounds  upon  his 
Master's  body,  and  two  fronds  of  palm  crossed  upon 
his  breast,  an  expression  of  the  wrath  of  the  South  Sea 
Islanders  against  the  Christian  traffic  in  human  flesh,  to 
realize  with  shame  the  devilish  elements  that  have  stained 
much  of  our  intercourse  with  the  non-Christian  world. 


THE  IMPACT  OF  WEST  UPON  EAST       141 

There  has  been  immeasurable  commercial  exploitation. 
And  there  has  been  the  opium  trade  with  China  and  there 
is  still  the  rum  traffic  with  Africa.  And  the  morphine  and 
tobacco  business  and  the  transfer  of  the  American  brew- 
eries to  China  are  an  international  scandal  and  offense. 

In  the  third  place,  there  have  been  non-Christian  ele- 
ments in  our  personal  impact  upon  the  non-Christian 
world.  There  was  published  some  ten  years  ago  an  in- 
teresting but  depressing  book  written  by  a  graduate  of 
one  of  our  Western  universities,  who  went  on  a  tramp 
around  the  world,  and  who,  penniless,  made  his  way 
across  Europe  and  across  Asia  and  back  to  the 
United  States  again,  right  down  on  the  bones 
of  life  over  all  the  world.  It  was  interesting 
because  any  such  experience  would  inevitably  be 
interesting;  but  also  it  was  sad  because  of  its  instances 
of  the  domineering  assertion  of  the  sense  of  racial  supe- 
riority, and  its  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  Western 
men  have  gone  out  over  the  Eastern  world  and  have 
affronted  the  fundamental  principles  of  human  brother- 
hood and  equality.  Again  and  again  our  personal  touch 
with  the  non-Christian  world  has  been  radically  un- 
christian. I  was  told  once  of  a  dinner  given  by  the 
French  Consul  in  a  certain  Chinese  city  where  I  was, 
where,  after  the  French  Government  had  opened  a  hos- 
pital for  the  purpose  of  conciliating  the  people,  the  Consul 
invited  a  number  of  guests  to  a  feast,  and  behind  every 
guest's  chair  he  had  thoughtfully  provided  a  girl  from 
one  of  the  brothels,  having  been  mindful,  not  of  their 
tastes  only,  but  also  of  their  lusts.  And  that  is  unhappily 
no  exceptional  illustration  of  an  ethical  behaviour  that 
has  been  too  common  in  our  impact  upon  the  non-Chris- 
tian world. 

And  our  civilization  itself  is  not  altogether  Christian. 


142     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

We  see  in  it  here  at  home  radically  un-Christian  ele- 
ments. Our  Lord  Himself  is  not  Lord  yet  of  all  our 
corporate  and  organized  life;  and  just  so  far  as  we 
carry  our  civilization,  with  its  mingled  good  and  evil, 
with  its  non-Christian  elements  tainting  and  defiling  its 
Christian  elements  over  the  world,  just  to  that  extent  is 
our  impact  upon  the  East  non-Christian.  It  is  that  impact 
which  must  be  Christianized. 

Now  how  big  is  that  "  must "  ?  We  say  that  the  im- 
pact of  the  West  upon  the  East  must  be  Christianized. 
How  deeply  do  we  feel  that?  Why  must  it  be  Chris- 
tianized? It  must  be  Christianized,  first  of  all,  because  if 
it  is  necessary  for  every  individual  to  be  a  Christian  in 
his  relationships  with  others,  it  is  necessary  for  every 
collection  of  individuals  to  be  Christians  in  their  rela- 
tions to  others.  There  are  no  different  types  of  ethics, 
some  for  the  individual,  some  for  society,  some  for  the 
nation  and  some  for  the  race.  It  is  just  as  obligatory  for 
the  nation  and  the  race  to  do  right  as  it  is  for  the  in- 
dividual to  do  right,  and  to  be  a  Christian  is  to  want  to 
do  right,  to  live  up  to  Christian  principles,  to  strive  to 
embody  in  all  our  acts  and  relationships  the  ideals  and 
the  conceptions,  the  laws  and  spirit  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  We  are  bound  to  do  right  in  all  our  relationships 
with  the  East  as  nations  and  as  races,  just  because  we  are 
bound  to  do  right  and  to  be  Christians  as  individual  men. 

In  the  second  place,  our  impact  upon  the  East  must  be 
Christianized  because  we  are  moving  out  upon  the  East 
in  very  many  different  ways,  and  those  ways  are  sure 
steadily  to  increase.  Mr.  Kidd  has  pointed  out  in  his 
little  book  on  "The  Control  of  the  Tropics"  that  the 
efficient  nations  are  certain  to  move  out  over  all  the 
world  that  is  occupied  by  the  inefficient  peoples  to  teach 
those  inefficient  peoples  the  secrets  of  efficiency  and  the 


THE  IMPACT  OP  WEST  UPON  EAST       143 

lesson  of  stewardship  of  life  and  in  life.  And  we  cannot 
separate  the  diiferent  forms  in  which  that  movement  of 
the  West  upon  the  East  is  taking  place.  They  are  all  of 
them  inextricably  intertwined.  And  every  one  of  them 
is  bound  to  suffer  or  to  benefit  from  the  character  of  the 
rest.  Christianity  is  sure  to  be  damaged  in  its  purer  form 
of  expression  in  the  missionary  enterprise  by  everything 
that  is  non-Christian  in  all  the  other  forms  of  the  move- 
ment of  the  West  upon  the  non-Christian  world.  We 
have  to  Christianize  our  impact  from  the  West  upon  the 
East  in  the  interest  of  our  distinctively  missionary  prop- 
aganda. We  cannot  go  to  the  East  and  preach  one 
doctrine  to  it  by  the  lives  of  our  missionaries,  and  an- 
other doctrine  by  the  lives  of  our  merchants.  We  cannot 
without  great  difficulty  teach  a  theoretical  message  which 
is  not  confirmed  in  the  actual  diplomacy  and  conduct  of 
our  Western  peoples.  In  the  interest  of  Christianity  and 
our  missionary  enterprise,  we  must  penetrate  with  Chris- 
tian principle  all  those  forms  of  our  contact  with  the 
non-Christian  world  with  which,  for  good  or  ill,  our 
Christian  impact  is  inseparably  interwoven. 

But,  in  the  third  place,  we  must  Christianize  this  im- 
pact in  the  interest  of  the  impact  itself.  As  we  look  back 
across  the  years  we  see  that  just  in  proportion  as  our 
impact  upon  the  East  has  been  Christian,  has  it  been 
powerful  for  good.  Our  best  diplomacy  has  been  the 
diplomacy  which  we  have  exercised  through  Christian 
-men.  We  never  had  happier  relations  with  China  than 
when  S.  Wells  Williams  was  the  brain  and  soul  of  our 
legation  in  Pekin.  And  also  as  we  look  back  we  see 
that  our  commercial  relationship  with  the  non-Christian 
world  has  been  powerful  for  good  precisely  in  proportion 
as  it  has  been  dominated  by  the  Christian  principle.  Our 
impact  upon  the  East  has  been  potent  for  right  and  truth 


144     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

as  Christian  principle  has  wrought  in  it  and  through  it. 
It  has  certainly  been  so  in  Africa  and  the  South  Sea 
Islands.  There  is  a  passage  in  James  Stewart's  "  Dawn 
in  the  Dark  Continent,"  in  which  Stewart  quotes  James 
Chalmers  as  setting  forth  a  principle  which  Stewart  said 
he  had  seen  again  and  again  exemplified  in  the  life  of 
Africa.  Said  Chalmers :  "  I  have  never  seen  a  savage 
whom  civilization  without  Christianity  had  succeeded  in 
civilizing."  As  far  as  he  had  known  the  South  Sea 
Islands,  whatever  uplift  of  life  there  had  been,  had  come 
only  in  so  far  as  Christianity  had  found  access  to  the 
life  of  these  peoples,  and  James  Stewart,  out  of  one  of  the 
largest  experiences  ever  given  to  any  man  in  Africa, 
bore  testimony  to  the  same  truth  regarding  the  Dark 
Continent. 

And  we  can  go  further  than  this;  it  is  not  only  true 
that  the  past  impact  of  the  West  upon  the  East  has  been 
largely  ineffective,  has,  indeed,  been  altogether  impotent 
for  good,  except  as  it  embodied  Christian  principles — 
we  can  go  further  and  say  that  so  far  as  it  has  not  em- 
bodied Christian  principle  it  has  been  positively  bad. 
If  you  ask  for  proof  it  can  be  given  in  one  word,  Con- 
stantinople. For  generations  the  Western  civilization  has 
touched  the  Eastern  civilization  in  the  city  of  Constanti- 
nople, and  every  man  who  lives  in  Constantinople 
will  tell  what  the  result  has  been.  Dr.  H.  O. 
Dwight,  a  long-time  resident  of  Constantinople,  set  forth 
the  facts  plainly  in  "  Constantinople  and  Its  Problems  " : 

"  Civilization  represented  by  Western  commercial  en- 
terprise and  isolated  from  religious  principle  has  been  in 
contact  with  the  people  of  Constantinople  for  many,  many 
years.  Since  the  Crimean  war  it  has  had  untrammelled 
sway.  Some  of  the  externals  of  environment  have  bene- 
fited from  this  contact.    Individuals  may  sometimes  have 


THE  IMPACT  OF  WEST  UPON  EAST       145 

been  lifted  out  of  the  quagmires  of  the  mass  of  the  pop- 
ulation by  glimpses  of  what  manhood  really  is.  But  there 
is  no  question  as  to  the  general  result.  The  result  has 
been  the  moral  deterioration  of  the  city  and  the  strength- 
ening of  the  repulsion  felt  by  Turks  toward  the  West. 
One  of  the  leading  Turkish  papers  of  Constantinople 
dealt  with  this  subject  not  long  ago.  It  said  that  the 
one  positive  influence  of  Western  civilization  is  against 
God  and  in  favour  of  drunkenness  and  debauchery.  It 
pointed  to  the  great  number  of  disorderly  houses  in  Pera, 
which  engulfed  and  destroyed  large  numbers  of  Mo- 
hammedan youth,  and  it  declared  in  open  terms  that  the 
family  life  of  Europeans  living  in  Pera  is  such  as  to 
lead  to  the  supposition  that  marital  fidelity  is  not  known 
there.  '  We  want  none  of  this  Christian  civilization/ 
said  the  Turk." 

Except  so  far  as  our  Christianity  has  permeated  our 
Western  impact  upon  the  East,  that  impact  has  been 
positively  harmful  and  bad.  It  has  broken  down  what 
Avas  innocent  and  good;  it  has  destroyed  the  moral  and 
industrial  organization  of  old  societies,  and,  save  as  in 
some  measure  Christian  principles  have  been  embodied  in 
it,  it  has  been  a  visibly  deteriorating  and  destructive 
power. 

In  the  fourth  place,  we  are  bound  to  Christianize  the 
impact  of  the  W^est  upon  the  East,  because  inevitably 
that  impact  is  a  religious  impact.  We  cannot  have  any 
impact  of  the  West  upon  the  East,  no  matter  how  much 
we  may  think  we  are  secularizing  it,  that  is  not  distinct- 
ively religious  alike  in  its  character  and  in  its  results. 
The  ideal  of  a  religious  neutrality  is  a  purely  chimerical 
idea.  Every  man*s  influence  is  either  for  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  or  against  the  Gospel  of  Christ.  And  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  non-religious  connection  between  two 
men  or  nations,  or  two  halves  of  the  world.  All  life  in 
Asia  is  religious  and  we  cannot  touch  Asia  without  exert- 


146     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

ing  an  influence  upon  religion.  All  our  contact  with  the 
non-Christian  peoples  is  religiously  destructive.  We  are 
paralyzing  and  overthrowing  their  old  systems  of  ethical 
and  religious  belief.  We  are  doing  that  even  if  we  do 
not  send  a  missionai*y  to  those  shores,  and  we  are  bound 
to  make  this  impact  of  the  West  upon  the  East,  not  only 
not  a  merely  destructive  impact,  but  also  a  constructive 
and  creative  impact  for  good.  We  can  do  this  only  by  pen- 
etrating it  with  Christian  principle  and  with  Christian  love. 

And  we  are  bound  to  Christianize  our  impact  upon  the 
East  because  Christianity  is  the  only  racially  unifying 
bond.  You  cannot  unite  permanently  dissimilar  races 
by  any  commercial  institutes.  You  cannot  bind  them 
together  by  mere  political  ties.  The  whole  history  of  the 
world  tells  us  that  the  only  unifying  racial  bond  is  a 
common  religious  faith.  England  is  able  to  govern  India 
to-day  and  has  been  able  to  hold  India  all  these  years, 
because  India  has  never  been  unified.  In  one  of  the  most 
illuminating  books  on  history  that  has  appeared  in  a 
half  century,  Professor  Seeley's  "  Expansion  of  Eng- 
land," which  is  also  one  of  the  best  books  we  have  on  the 
American  Revolution  and  on  Great  Britain's  colonial 
policy  in  India,  Seeley  points  this  out  and  says  that  the 
whole  policy  of  Great  Britain  in  India  has  been,  and 
must  be,  to  unify  the  masses  of  that  land,  because  only 
by  unifying  them  can  the  land  be  prepared  for  its  proper 
destination,  and  the  one  way,  he  suggests,  in  which  these 
diverse  races  can  ever  be  unified  is  by  giving  them  one 
common  religious  hope  and  faith.  Our  Christianity  is 
the  only  permanently  harmonizing  racial  or  national 
bond,  and  we  are  bound  to  Christianize  our  impact  upon 
the  world,  because  we  do  not  want  to  keep  this  world 
a  maelstrom  of  antagonistic  races. 

We  want  to  build  out  of  this  world  one  great  brother- 


THE  IMPACT  OF  WEST  UPON  EAST       147 

hood  of  the  family  of  God,  and  we  can  do  this  only  by 
penetrating  all  our  relationships  with  the  non-Christian 
world  with  the  principle  of  that  Gospel  by  which  alone  the 
world  can  ever  be  made  one.  The  Western  impact  upon 
the  East  must  be  Christianized,  and  it  must  be  Chris- 
tianized upon  these  grounds. 

And  now  how  can  it  be  Christianized?  It  can  be 
Christianized  by  our  practicing  Christianity  as  a  nation, 
just  as  we  practice  it  as  individuals ;  by  pervading  all  of 
our  relationships  with  non-Christian  powers  with  the 
Christian  principle  and  the  Christian  spirit.  I  was  handed 
several  years  ago  by  one  of  our  missionaries  from  Japan  a 
letter  from  a  friend  living  in  a  great  city  in  Japan.  The 
letter  illustrates  vividly  this  first  form  in  which  we  are 
to  Christianize  our  impact  upon  the  East: 

"  I  want  to  write  you  a  word  about  international  re- 
lations. There  is  no  doubt  that  the  certain  degree  of 
alienation  between  Japan  and  America  that  has  come  to 
exist  in  the  past  few  years  has  an  unfavourable  influence 
upon  Christian  work  in  Japan.  It  is  also  within  the 
range  of  possibility  that  if  the  agitation  is  kept  up  war 
may  eventually  come.  The  diplomatic  relations  even 
now,  I  have  good  reason  for  saying,  are  delicate.  Such 
an  event,  as  we  all  realize,  would  be  an  unspeakable 
calamity,  both  from  the  standpoint  of  religion  and  of 
humanity.  The  East  and  the  West  are  bound  to  come 
closely  together  during  this  century,  but  all  is  at  stake 
in  their  coming  together  peacefully  and  sympathetically. 

"  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  if  in  some  way  the  Christian 
element  of  the  population  of  America  could  at  this  time 
make  itself  more  strongly  felt  in  reference  to  this  ques- 
tion it  would  be  eminently  fortunate.  It  is  quite  possible 
to  restrict  immigration  into  America  in  an  amicable  way, 
I  believe.  The  essential  thing  is  that  the  Japanese  nation 
be  not  treated  as  an  inferior  race ;  that  the  nation's  honour 
be  not  infringed  upon.  It  is  clear  in  all  diplomatic  nego- 
tiations commercial  interests  are  kept  in  mind.    It  seems 


148     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

to  me  not  only  worthy  of,  but  right  for  the  government 
of  a  civilized  nation  to  take  the  missionary  problem  into 
consideration  also — that  is,  to  be  extremely  careful  to 
avoid,  if  possible,  doing  anything  that  will  hinder  the 
Christianization  of  these  great  Eastern  nations.  Rather 
special  effort  should  be  made  to  show  the  Christian 
spirit,  and  to  help  and  also  to  receive  help.  Compara- 
tively speaking,  America  has  not  a  bad  record  in  this 
respect,  but  as  she  becomes  more  imperialistic  there  is 
more  danger. 

"  Then,  as  to  the  question  whether  Japan  is  true  to  her 
pledges  on  the  subject  of  the  open  door  in  Manchuria 
and  the  integrity  of  China,  it  is  specially  necessary  that 
really  competent  observation  be  made.  We  all  knov/ 
how  easy  it  is  for  a  man  to  get  into  a  certain  atmosphere 
here  in  the  East  in  which  he  can  see  absolutely  no  good 
in  the  Japanese,  and  in  which  only  suspicion  and  mistrust 
and  misrepresentation  prevail,  and  when  a  man  with 
such  a  bias  makes  a  report  one  can  imagine  the  result. 
It  is  difficult  to  stop  foolish  and  v/icked  war  talk  on  the 
part  of  the  newspapers  and  individuals,  and  also  to 
restrain  anti- Japanese  agitation  on  the  west  coast,  but 
there  is  at  least  the  influence  of  public  sentiment  that  can 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  situation." 

We  have  a  right  to  demand  that  the  attitude  of  this 
nation  toward  every  non-Christian  nation  should  be  a 
Christian  attitude.  The  idea  of  war  between  the  Ameri- 
can people  and  any  Asiatic  people  is  preposterous.  There 
are  no  possible  conflicts  in  sight  that  justify  us  in  any 
other  attitude  toward  the  whole  non-Christian  world 
than  an  attitude  of  sympathy  and  brotherhood  and  peace. 
And  we  are  bound  to  practice  in  our  national  relations 
w^ith  all  of  these  nations  the  same  spirit  of  restraint,  of 
generous  confidence  in  another's  good-will,  of  unselfish 
regard  for  another's  interest  which  we  regard  ourselves 
as  under  obligations  to  practice  in  our  relationship  one 
to  another  as  Christian  men.     Our  newspapers  should 


THE  IMPACT  OF  WEST  UPOls  EAST       149 

realize  this  and  behave  with  decency.  So  also  should 
Japan's.    That  is  the  first  thing. 

In  the  second  place,  we  can  do  it  by  making  sure  that 
the  men  who  go  out  to  represent  this  country  in  com- 
merce and  in  trade  really  represent  that  which  is  best 
and  truest  in  the  land.  The  Government  is  not  to  go 
mto  the  business  of  religious  propagandizing.  But  this 
country  is  a  Christian  country.  We  have  the  judgment 
of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  the  highest  possible 
authority  there  could  be  in  this  land,  written  by  the  late 
lamented  Justice  Brewer,  for  declaring  that  the  United 
States  is  not  a  non-religious  nation,  that  the  United 
States  is  a  Christian  nation.  We  have  a  duty  to  seek  to 
make  sure  that  all  that  goes  out  from  this  nation  to  the 
rest  of  the  world,  whether  politically  or  commercially, 
should  justly  represent  the  true  character  of  our  people. 
It  is  not  a  right  thing,  for  example,  to  send  a  man  who 
drinks  freely  to  represent  us  at  a  Moslem  court.  There 
have  been  in  the  past  great  bodies  of  noble  men  who  have 
gone  out  to  represent  the  Western  nations  to  the  Eastern 
world.  A  long  list  of  those  names  at  once  suggests  itself 
to  us — men  like  Chinese  Gordon,  and  John  and  Henry 
Lawrence,  and  Herbert  Edwardes,  and  Townsend  Harris, 
and  Commodore  Perry — and  the  list  might  be  indefinitely 
multiplied  of  statesmen  and  merchants  who  carried  their 
Christian  character  with  them  and  who,  wherever  they 
were  and  in  all  that  they  did,  stood  unabashed  and  faithful 
as  Christian  men.  We  can  Christianize  the  impact  of  the 
West  upon  the  East  by  making  sure  that  this  kind  of 
man  goes  out  to  represent  us  there. 

In  the  third  place,  we  must  do  it  by  Christianizing  our 
trade.  A  great  many  of  our  Western  business  men  are 
outraged  to-day  because  Japan  is  stealing  our  Western 
trade-marks,  and  discriminating  in  favour  of  her  own 


150      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

merchants  wherever  she  is  able  to  do  so.  In  what  school 
did  Japan  learn  those  lessons?  We  cannot  expect  to 
conduct  our  trade  with  the  East  upon  non-Christian 
principles,  and  then  have  the  East  turn  the  other  cheek 
to  us  and  practice  Christian  principles  in  trade  with  us. 
We  are  bound  to  carry  on  our  trade  with  other  nations 
on  a  Christian  basis,  I  mean  with  honesty,  and  with 
unselfishness  and  a  desire  for  mutual  helpfulness  and 
good. 

We  can  do  it  by  Christianizing  our  educational  impact. 
When  young  men  come  over  from  Asia  to  study  in  our 
own  schools,  as  they  are  coming  by  the  hundreds,  we 
can  make  sure  that  they  receive  a  Christian  education 
here.  The  university,  whether  it  be  a  private  university 
or  a  State  university,  that  educates  in  pure  secularism  a 
young  man  who  comes  here  from  the  East  to  study  in 
our  schools,  and  sends  him  back  with  the  idea  that  human 
culture  is  possible  without  religious  faith,  is  an  enemy 
to  the  good  of  the  world  and  to  the  right  relations  be- 
tween the  Western  and  the  Eastern  nations.  We  are 
bound  to  Christianize  not  only  our  educational  impact 
upon  the  East  when  it  comes  to  the  West,  but  we  are 
bound  to  do  it  when  we  carry  that  educational  impact 
out  to  the  East.  If  we  seek  to  benefit  the  nations,  we 
must  beware  how  we  lay  up  peril  for  the  generations 
that  are  to  come  after  us;  we  must  make  sure  that  the 
education  by  which  we  seek  to  help  the  world  is  given, 
and  that  the  larger  power  which  it  brings  is  held,  under 
the  constraints  of  a  loyal  and  simple  and  true-hearted  re- 
ligious faith.  We  have  to  Christianize  our  educational 
impact  upon  the  world. 

And,  last  of  all,  we  must  remember  that  it  is  by  our 
national  conduct  and  our  national  character  that  we  are 
evangelizing  the  world,  as  truly  as  by  the  missionaries 


THE  IMPACT  OF  WEST  UPON  EAST       151 

whom  we  send  ten  thousand  miles  away  to  represent  us 
there.  We  cannot  escape  from  the  evangelization  of  na- 
tional example.  Again  and  again  we  have  seen  the  re- 
sults of  it.  The  Iwakura  Embassy,  which  fifty  years 
ago  went  out  from  Japan,  came  to  the  West  and  visited 
us  and  Europe  and  returned,  and  men  in  that  embassy 
went  back  with  the  supreme  idea  that  what  Japan  needed 
was  the  Christian  gospel,  and  the  Christian  home,  and 
they  got  that  idea  from  Christian  men  and  the  Christian 
homes  with  which  they  had  been  in  contact  here  in  the 
Western  lands.  I  was  interested  in  noting  in  a  Japanese 
paper  some  time  ago  the  impressions  of  the  different 
members  of  a  Japanese  Embassy  who  came  here  repre- 
senting the  business  men  of  Japan.  Four  of  the  men 
who  gave  their  impressions  spoke  of  the  attitude  of  the 
American  people  toward  women  as  the  one  thing  that 
most  impressed  them.  Thank  God  there  are  elements  of 
good  in  our  Western  life,  which,  when  Eastern  men 
come  in  contact  with  them,  bear  faithful  testimony  to 
the  Christian  principles  of  our  society.  But  one  re- 
members how  the  Gaekwar  of  Baroda  went  back  to 
India,  with  a  radically  different  opinion  of  our  Western 
Hfe,  proclaiming  to  the  people  of  India  that  they  had  only 
one  thing  to  learn  from  the  West,  and  that  was  its  secret 
of  industrial  power,  its  ability  to  produce  wealth,  that 
that  was  the  only  contribution  the  West  had  to  make  to 
the  non-Christian  world.  We  must  beware  of  the  gospel 
we  are  preaching  by  day  and  by  night,  by  what  we  are  as 
a  nation. 

We  are  brought  face  to  face  here  with  the  home  mis- 
sionary obligation,  the  duty  of  making  our  land  a  Chris- 
tian land,  in  order  that  by  what  we  are,  as  well  as  by 
what  we  say,  we  may  convey  our  gospel  to  the  whole 
world.     I  know  that  there  are  men  who  say  that  there 


152     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

cannot  be  any  such  thing  as  a  Christian  nation.  I  have 
a  good  friend  with  whom  I  have  been  carrying  on  a 
correspondence  as  to  what  the  fundamental  missionary 
motive  is,  and  in  his  last  letter  he  said  he  did  not  think 
it  was  possible  to  say  that  there  would  or  could  be  any 
such  thing  as  Christian  nations.  I  suppose  he  meant 
that  Christianity  is  a  matter  of  the  individual  relationship 
with  God.  Well,  there  is  a  great  truth  there,  but  can 
there  not  be  such  a  thing  as  a  Christian  home,  or  a  Chris- 
tian family  ?  May  not  I  and  my  children  know  ourselves 
to  be  one  in  a  corporate  family  Christian  life  that  is  as 
really  Christian  as  the  relation  which  binds  each  of  us  as 
individuals  to  the  Gospel  of  God,  the  Father  of  us  all? 
Surely  there  can  be  such  things  as  Christian  families. 
And  if  there  are  Christian  families,  why  cannot  there 
be  groups  of  Christian  families  making  Christian  com- 
munities, and  if  there  can  be  Christian  communities, 
there  can  be  many  Christian  communities,  there  can  be 
Christian  lands. 

When  the  Lord  taught  His  disciples  to  pray,  "Thy 
Kingdom  come.  Thy  will  be  done,  on  earth  as  it  is  in 
Heaven,"  He  surely  meant  that  it  was  to  be  done  by 
families,  by  communities,  by  nations,  as  well  as  by  in- 
dividual men.  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  a  kingdom  in 
which  in  all  their  corporate  relations,  in  all  their  racial 
ties,  men  fulfill  the  will  of  our  Father  Who  is  in  Heaven. 
Nations  have  no  right  to  live  except  as  they  fulfill  that 
law.  There  dare  not  be  in  that  Kingdom  of  God  any 
nations  that  are  not  Christian.  There  is  no  contact  of 
any  Western  nation  with  other  nations  which  may  be 
other  than  a  Christian  contact.  There  is  no  impact  open 
to  it  upon  the  Eastern  world  which  should  not  be  a 
Christian  impact.  We  are  given  this  gospel  that  it  may 
make  us,  one  by  one,  individually  the  followers  of  the 


THE  IMPACT  OP  WEST  UPON  EAST       153 

King  of  all  the  earth.  We  are  given  it  also  that  it  may 
be  the  basis  of  all  our  family  and  our  corporate  and  our 
national  life,  and  it  must  find  utterance  in  all  the  out- 
going of  our  effort  and  our  sympathy  toward  the  non- 
Christian  world. 

And  may  this  not  be  the  point  where  the  great  emphasis 
needs  now  to  be  laid?  It  is  futile  for  us  to  hope  that 
with  a  little  band  of  individuals  sent  out  over  the  world 
we  can  preach  to  the  world  the  gospel  of  peace,  if  in  all 
of  our  organized  national  life  in  the  West  we  are  preach- 
ing the  gospel  of  strife.  It  is  futile  to  hope  that  a  little 
company  of  men,  however  much  they  may  attempt  to 
isolate  themselves  from  the  national  and  racial  life  out 
of  which  they  came,  can  preach  to  the  world  the  gospel 
of  love,  if  in  our  corporate  and  national  life  we  are 
preaching  the  gospel  of  selfishness  and  of  distrust.  It  is 
futile  to  hope  that  we  can  send  to  all  the  world  the  mes- 
sage of  the  love  of  God  in  Christ,  by  those  who  go  out 
to  represent  our  Christian  churches,  if  we  are  preaching 
to  the  world  by  other  tongues,  tongues  so  loud  that  they 
almost  drown  the  still  small  voice  of  the  missionary  en- 
terprise, a  message  of  hate  and  discord  and  the  waste  of 
life.  And  it  is  in  our  hands  to  determine  whether  or 
not  now,  not  by  one  single  expression,  by  the  outgoing 
of  one  separated  body  of  men,  but  by  the  whole  impact 
of  our  Christian  nations  upon  the  non-Christian  world, 
we  shall  commend  to  all  mankind  that  one  God  who  is 
the  Father  of  every  race — Anglo-Saxon,  Japanese, 
Chinese,  Hindu  and  African — and  who  would  draw  to- 
gether in  one,  in  the  only  way  in  which  they  can  ever  be 
drawn  together,  namely,  in  the  Gospel  of  His  Son,  all 
those  races  of  men  whom  He  made  of  one  blood  and 
whom  He  would  bind  in  one  brotherhood. 


VII 

THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  THE  WORLD  IN 
THIS  GENERATION 

WHEN  the  foreign  missionary  movement  among 
students  began  more  than  thirty  years  ago, 
it  adopted  a  watchword  embodying  its  hope 
and  its  ideal,  defining  its  distinctive  purpose,  and  un- 
sealing— or  so  it  was  desired — the  great  fountains  of 
power  which  are  opened  only  to  those  who  enlist  them- 
selves in  bold  and  heroic  undertakings, — "  The  Evangel- 
ization of  the  World  in  this  Generation."  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  at  the  beginning  this  watchword  called  for  a 
great  deal  of  explanation  and  for  no  small  measure  of 
defense;  and  we  whose  memories  go  back  to  those  days 
can  remember  how  it  was  felt  to  be  necessaiy  often  to 
review  the  watchword,  reexamining  the  bases  on  which 
we  had  thought  ourselves  justified  in  adopting  it,  and 
answering  afresh  the  objections  that  had  been  laid  against 
it.  We  do  not  feel  it  necessary  any  more  to  traverse 
that  old  ground.  The  watchword  has  worked  its  way 
widely  into  the  missionary  conscience  of  the  Christian 
Church,  and  though  often  criticized  still  we  do  not  feel 
the  need  to  re-vindicate  its  adoption  or  to  re-lay  emphasis 
on  the  general  conception  of  the  phrase  or  to  re-interpret 
its  meaning.  But  there  are  some,  at  least,  who  believe 
deeply  that  the  day  has  come  to  rearrange  our  emphasis. 

Thirty  years  ago  it  was  necessary  to  emphasize  "the 
world."    The  Christian  Church  had  not  come  to  realize 

154 


THE  EVANGELIZATIOK  OF  THE  WOELD    165 

the  world-obligation  of  her  mission.  The  great  battle 
which  the  original  student  volunteers  had  to  fxght  at  the 
beginning  of  our  own  national  missionary  history,  a 
century  ago,  was  a  battle  in  behalf  of  the  fundamental 
missionary  character  of  our  religion ;  and  that  battle  was  i 
still  an  unwon  conflict  a  generation  ago.  It  was  neces- 
sary then  again  to  stand  in  defense  of  the  fundamental 
character  of  our  religion  and  to  deny  the  full  title  of 
any  Christian  system  to  bear  the  name  of  Christ  that 
looked  out  on  the  world  with  a  territorial  or  provincial 
view. 

The  day  is  not  altogether  gone  by  for  that  emphasis. 
The  world-view  is  still  inadequately  accepted.  It  is  still 
imperfectly  woven  into  the  programs  of  our  Christian 
Churches.  Too  many  of  them  are  dealing  with  narrow 
and  insular  tasks.  Too  few  of  them  have  conceived  their 
duty  in  the  world  to  be  a  duty  that  lies  to  the  whole  of 
human  life  and  human  kind  or  have  opened  themselves 
to  the  rich  potencies  of  the  world-purpose.  The  world- 
view  is  still  inadequately  accepted  in  the  programs  of 
individual  lives.y^ow  many  thousands  of  students  there 
are  in  our  American  and  Canadian  colleges  and  uni- 
versities who  are  forming  their  life-plans  not  only  with 
no  thought  of  a  world-citizenship  but  with  no  adequate 
thought  even  of  the  full  significance  of  their  own  na- 
tional citizenship.  Many  a  man  forms  his  life-purpose, 
without  allowing  it  to  enter  into  the  field  of  his  vision 
that  God's  will  for  him  might  lie  beyond  the  boundaries 
of  his  own  land.  Until  the  world- view  comes  to  dominate 
the  program  of  every  Christian  Church  and  the  program 
of  every  Christian  man's  life,  we  dare  not  remove  the 
emphasis  from  the  world-conception.    / 

The  essential  character  of  Christianity  also  is  still  in- 
adequately perceived.     What  is   the   fundamental  fact 


156      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

about  Christianity?  Is  it  not  its  universality?  What 
makes  Jesus  Christ  a  valid  authority  for  us  but  the  uni- 
versality of  His  person?  What  makes  the  Gospel  valid 
in  the  life  of  any  individual  man  but  its  universal  validity? 
There  is  not  a  word  in  the  New  Testament  that  singles 
out  the  races  to  which  we  belong  as  races  that  have  any 
distinctive  claim  upon  Christ  and  His  religion.  He  and 
His  religion  belong  to  us  only  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that 
we  share  in  the  claim  of  all  mankind  to  Him  and  to 
what  He  came  to  give  and  to  do.  We  must  say  "  world  " 
until  we  think  "  world  "  in  every  thought  of  Christianity. 

Again,  in  this  past  generation,  we  have  entered  still 
further  upon  a  new  era  of  world-life.  I  am  not  speaking 
of  the  geographical  contraction  of  the  world,  of  the  way 
in  which  the  races  have  been  thrust  upon  one  another. 
I  am  not  speaking  of  those  great  upheaving  movements 
that  are  so  rapidly  changing  the  world.  I  am  speaking 
of  that  phenomenon  of  human  unity  that  we  are  facing 
now  with  ever-increasing  clearness  of  vision,  and  with  a 
discernment  that  enables  us  to  see  that  the  problems  of 
every  separate  nation  are  the  problems  of  all  mankind. 
The  problems  of  personal  salvation,  of  national  character, 
of  racial  relationship,  these  are  the  three  great  problems 
that  men  are  facing  on  almost  every  square  mile  of  the 
surface  of  our  earth ;  and  they  can  be  answered  not  by 
any  insular  and  territorial  solution  but  only  with  an 
answer  that  is  valid  for  the  need  of  all  mankind. 

Not  only  have  we  passed  into  a  new  era  of  world- 
movement,  but  we  are  facing  to-day  a  new  revelation  of 
world-need,  altogether  different  from  that  which  we 
faced  a  generation  ago.  Walter  Bagehot  has  pointed  out 
the  fact  that  over  the  great  non-Christian  nations  of  the 
world — and  Meredith  Townsend  has  shown  us  the  same 
thing — a  fiat  of  arrest  had  seemed  to  fall  upon  all  the 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  THE  WORLD    157 

movements  of  human  life,  so  that  the  great  forces  of 
these  ahen  nations  which  have  carried  them  up  to  a 
certain  point  have  proved  impotent  beyond  that  point. 
The  non-Christian  nations  themselves  now  realize  this, 
and  we  are  made  aware  as  never  before  of  the  deep  needs 
of  their  life;  for  the  past  experiments  of  life  and  the 
study  of  comparative  religions  have  made  unmistakably 
clear  to  us  and  to  some  of  them  that  there  is  nothing 
in  any  non-Christian  faith  adequate  to  meet  those  needs 
or  to  supply  human  life  v/ith  the  power  of  progress. 

This  new  revelation  of  the  need  of  the  world  has  not 
been  confined  to  non-Christian  nations.  Recent  years 
have  confronted  us  with  a  new  and  more  impressive 
demonstration  of  need  in  our  Christian  lands  that  de- 
mands an  increased  and  abiding  emphasis  upon  the 
world-idea  of  the  Gospel.  We  were  trying,  up  to  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  to  solve  our  national  problems  on  this 
continent  with  a  national  Gospel,  and  the  needs  of  no 
nation  on  earth  can  be  solved  with  a  national  Gospel. 
God  saw  our  folly  and  our  failure,  and  He  took  the  only 
course,  I  suppose,  open  to  Him  to  enlighten  our  eyes. 
"  You  will  try,"  He  said,  "  to  solve  your  own  problems 
within  the  bounds  of  your  own  land,  will  you  ?  "  and  He 
tore  open  our  Western  frontier  and  thrust  the  Hawaiian 
Islands  upon  us.  We  failed  to  learn  His  lesson,  and  His 
next  rebuke  was  from  both  West  and  East,  as  He  pushed 
in  upon  us  Cuba,  Porto  Rico,  and  the  Philippine  Islands. 
Once  more,  while  our  eyes  were  still  holden.  He  tore  open 
our  Southern  doors  and  made  us  the  custodians  of  the 
new  gateway  between  the  Eastern  and  Western  Seas.  Not 
content  with  all  these  things,  He  took  great  hordes  of 
people  of  other  bloods  of  Southern  Europe  and  poured  the 
inhabitants  of  whole  villages  and  provinces  in  upon  us, 
saying,  "  Take  these,  too,  if  you  think  you  can  solve  your 


158     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

own  problems  inside  the  confines  of  your  own  isolated 
race."  And  what  is  the  divine  meaning  of  these  later  days 
of  wrath  and  burning  except  God's  warning  to  us  against 
that  national  isolation  in  which  we  have  tried  to  work 
out  the  problems  of  our  own  land  in  negligence  of  our 
neighbourly  duty  and  our  world-trust? 

All  the  conditions  in  the  world  which  we  are  facing 
to-day  drive  in  upon  us  the  obligation  of  preserving  the 
old  emphasis,  and  making  it  yet  heavier  and  more  grave, 
upon  the  world-character  of  the  Church's  mission. 

The  second  phase  of  the  missionary  movement  of  the 
past  generation,  which  followed  fast  upon  the  first,  laid 
its  emphasis  upon  the  last  words  in  the  watchword :  "  The 
evangelization  of  the  world  in  this  generation,"  We 
learned  very  soon  that  the  world  we  were  to  evangelize 
is  not  a  world  of  thousand-year-old  trees  or  a  world  of 
century-old  brutes,  but  that  it  is  a  world  of  living  men 
who  will  last  one  generation  and  no  more;  that  the  only 
world  with  which  we  have  anything  directly  to  do,  that 
the  only  world  with  which  we  are  confronted,  and  which 
confronts  us  and  asks  an  accounting  from  us,  is  the 
world  of  our  own  generation.  I  am  not  forgetting  our 
organic  responsibility  to  posterity,  but  the  only  discharge 
of  that  responsibility  is  the  doing  of  present  duty.  And 
the  Church  very  soon  came  to  see  this,  too.  The  one 
great  note  of  our  missionary  enterprise  for  the  last  ten 
years  has  been  the  note  of  immediacy.  All  who  gathered 
at  the  missionary  council  in  Edinburgh  felt  the  pressure 
of  it  there.  Men  were  no  longer  ready  to  sit  down  under 
the  deliberate  principle  of  the  postponement  of  mission- 
ary duty.  They  came  to  realize  that  our  task  lay  at  once 
to  great  multitudes  of  men  who  would  hear  the  Gospel 
never  if  they  did  not  hear  it  at  our  lips,  whose  right  to  it 
is  as  good  as  ours  and  whose  need  is  as  mortal. 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OP  THE  WORLD    169 

Another  great  change  which  these  years  have  brought 
with  them,  which  has  made  emphasis  upon  this  last 
phrase  comparatively  easy  for  us,  lies  in  this  fact— that 
the  last  thirty  years  have  seen  mankind  breaking  through 
the  mysteries  of  vast  new  secrets  of  power.  Great  en- 
ergies of  which  our  fathers  never  knew  are  now  laid  in 
our  hands  and  placed  beneath  our  mastery.  A  new 
world  of  power  and  possibility  has  been  opened  to  us,  a 
horizon-less  world.  The  bounds  of  freedom  have  been 
pushed  further  and  further  outward;  and  just  as  men 
realize  that  they  dare  not  place  any  limit  upon  the  power  / 
God  is  ready  to  put  in  the  hands  of  men  who  are  pre- 
pared to  use  physical  power  as  a  trust,  just  so  no  man 
dare  set  any  limit  upon  the  power  that  God  is  ready  to 
lay  in  the  hands  of  those  who  are  ready  to  use  spiritual 
power  also  as  a  trust.  We  are  beginning  to  believe  now 
that  our  Lord  was  a  man  of  honour  when  He  said :  "What- 
soever ye  ask  in  faith  believing,  ye  shall  receive,*'  and 
that  the  word  He  spoke  was  sincere  and  honest  when  He 
declared :  "  If  ye  have  faith,  nothing  shall  be  impossible 
unto  you."  Under  the  conviction  that  we  dare  postpone 
no  duty,  under  the  conviction  that  no  task  is  beyond  the 
strength  of  men  who  serve  God,  we  do  not  shrink  any 
longer  from  the  uttermost  implication  of  those  words: 
"  The  evangelization  of  the  world  in  this  generation." 

And  every  feature  of  the  world-situation  that  we  con- 
front to-day  is  a  summons  to  lay  new  emphasis  on  that 
phrase.  This  present  generation  that  we  are  facing  is  a 
generation  bowed  down  under  mortal  need.  Ask  the 
men  and  women  among  us  to-day  from  the  Chinese  Re- 
public to  tell  of  their  need.  Ask  the  men  who  have  come 
across  the  other  sea,  from  Africa,  to  tell  of  their  need.  Or 
ask  the  hundreds  of  students  in  the  United  States  of  the 
needs  of  the  fifty  millions  of  our  Southern  neighbours 


160     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

who  lie  closest  to  us  of  all  the  calling  nations  of  the  earth. 
Or  hear  our  own  American  paganism.  It  is  no  answer 
to  the  mortal  need  of  these  men  to  tell  them  that  long 
after  their  bones  have  mouldered,  by  some  slow  process 
of  racial  education  the  light  of  the  Gospel  shall  have 
glimmered  down  to  theij;  far-distant  children.  The  atti- 
tude of  those  who  can  thus  mock  the  living,  mortal  need 
of  the  generation  of  our  day  with  gravestones  instead  of 
bread,  is  not  the  attitude  of  Him  who  loved  the  world  and 
laid  down  His  life  for  its  soul. 

This  present  generation  is  not  a  generation  in  the  clutch 
of  deep  mortal  need  alone.  It  is  a  generation  of  plastic 
flow.  Other  great  ideas  will  surely  penetrate  the  minds 
of  all  mankind  in  this  generation.  Twenty-five  years 
from  now  not  a  village  on  the  face  of  the  earth  will  be  as 
it  is  to-day;  not  a  human  life  will  be  conditioned  as  it  is 
to-day.  Do  we  intend  to  sit  idly  by  and  allow  other  great 
ideas  to  pierce  to  the  life  of  the  world  while  the  redeem- 
ing idea  of  Christ,  which  we  know  to  be  the  most  piercing 
and  pervasive  of  all  ideas,  is  postponed  to  be  administered 
to  a  preempted  world  by  generations  that  come  after 
ours? 

This  present  generation  is  not  only  a  generation  of  deep 
mortal  need,  and  a  generation  of  plastic  flow;  it  is  also 
a  generation  in  which  that  plastic  flow  is  fast  settling  in 
its  moulds — m.oulds  that  will  last  for  our  day  and  the  day 
that  comes  after  our  day.  Was  Lowell  right  when  he 
said,  "  Once  to  every  m.an  or  nation  comes  the  moment — 
and  the  choice  goes  by  forever  "  ? 

Thus  looking  out  upon  the  world  that  is  calling  to  us, 
the  world  that  is  going  on  its  road  as  we  go  ours,  the 
world  of  plastic  flow  now  hardening  fast  into  forms  that 
will  not  change,  God  forbid  that  we  should  abate  one  iota 
of  the  emphasis  laid  heretofore  upon  the  necessity  of  the 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  THE  WOELD    161 

f 

evangelization  of  the  world,  not  in  some  other  day  than 

ours — that  day  will  face  its  own  duties — but  the  discharge 
of  our  duty  in  our  lives,  the  evangelization  of  our  genera- 
tion in  our  own  time ! 

And  there  is  one  stronger  reason  even  than  this  for 
perpetuating  and  deepening  the  old  emphasis.  We  need, 
and  we  never  shall  cease  to  need,  the  great  moral  and 
spiritual  principles  that  were  embodied  in  that  idea.  The 
man  who  desires  to  walk  with  God  must  walk  with  Him 
on  the  level  of  Godlike  tasks.  The  man  who  would  con- 
front the  Infinite  must  be  willing  to  do  so  on  the  plane 
of  the  program  of  the  Infinite,  and  not  invite  God  to  a 
humiliating  complicity  in  puny  undertakings.  All  life  is 
of  God,  and  all  duty,  even  the  humblest,  is  divine ;  but  we 
need  to-day,  as  the  Church  never  needed  in  any  day  gone 
by,  a  challenge  to  supreme  and  supernatural  enterprise 
and  a  commensurate  faith.  We  are  not  engaged  at  our 
own  charges  in  a  warfare  of  our  own.  We  did  not  con- 
ceive this  enterprise.  We  are  not  carrying  it  out  for  any 
glory  or  ends  of  our  own.  We  have  been  set  to  a  great 
task  by  One  whose  power  has  no  limits  fixed  to  it,  who 
has  charged  us  to  do  a  thing  that  we  can  do  because  He 
has  charged  us  to  do  it.  If  there  be  one  need  of  our  day 
greater  than  another,  it  is  the  need  of  which  Dr.  D.  S. 
Cairns  of  Aberdeen  wrote  once  regarding  the  miracles  of 
Water  Street,  the  need  "  in  the  theological  desert  of  a 
highv/ay  for  our  Lord,  a  recovery  of  the  ancient  faith," 
that  would  not  mortify  the  living  attribute  of  God's  own 
power,  but  that  would  allow  Him  to  show  to  men  the 
fullness  of  His  life  and  love,  and  the  fountain  of  super- 
human achievements  open  to  man  to-day. 

I  have  said  all  this  for  the  sake  of  avoiding  any  mis- 
understanding. Everything  that  we  have  ever  said  re- 
garding the  world-obligation  of  our  faith,  regarding  the 


162     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

possibility  of  the  duty  of  the  evangelization  of  the  world 
in  this  generation,  we  are  ready  now  to  reaffirm  and  to 
augment.  But  I  believe  that  the  pressing  need  of  our  time 
is  to  lay  emphasis  in  this  watchword  on  the  thought  that 
heretofore  we  have  been  too  much  passing  by, ''  the  evan- 
gelization of  the  world."  After  all,  that  is  the  basic  need. 
"  The  world,"  "  this  generation " — these  are  only  the 
sphere  in  space  and  time  in  which  the  basic  thing  is  to  be 
done.  Our  great  aim  and  end  is  to  evangelize.  What 
does  that  mean?  Well,  it  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  say  just 
what  it  means.  Who  can  tell  when  any  man  has  been 
evangelized?  Who  can  tell  when  any  nation  has  been 
evangelized?  Who  can  tell  when  the  world  has  been 
evangelized?  No  man  knows  when  any  man  has  heard. 
What  one  says,  no  two  of  us  hear  as  the  same  words. 
Some  of  us  seem  to  hear  it,  and  could  repeat  it,  but  we 
have  not  really  heard  it  at  all.  Some  of  us  have  heard 
half  of  it ;  some  of  us  have  heard  two-thirds  of  it.  What 
is  it  to  hear?  No  man  can  say.  What  is  it  to  be  evan- 
gelized? We  do  not  know;  but  we  know  enough  about 
our  own  primary  part  in  evangelization.  We  know  it  is 
our  part  to  take  the  living  Christ,  God's  message  and 
messenger,  and  what  that  living  Christ  said,  and  was,  and 
did,  not  only  the  Gospel  that  was  what  Jesus  Christ 
brought  and  taught,  but  the  Gospel  that  could  only  be 
after  Jesus  Christ  had  finished  His  life,  that  lay  deep- 
bedded  in  all  He  is  and  is  doing  now — to  take  that  Gospel 
of  Christ  alive  in  us,  and  to  lay  that  living  Christ  and  His 
message  upon  the  lives  of  men  and  upon  the  life  of  the 
world.  The  New  Testament  does  not  use  the  word 
"  evangelize "  in  an  exact  sense.  But  what  our  Lord 
Himself  and  St.  Paul  did  will  illustrate,  perhaps,  what  it 
is,  and  how  vital  and  fundamental  it  is.  In  three  short 
years  Jesus  went  up  and  down  Judea,  Samaria,  an^ 


THE  EVAl^GELIZATION  OF  THE  WOELD     163 

Galilee,  and  I  suppose  He  would  have  said  that  He  had 
evangelized  those  villages.  He  so  spoke  to  men.  St. 
Paul  tells  us  that  from  Jerusalem  round  about  to  Illyr- 
icum  he  had  fully  evangelized  the  Roman  world.  This, 
at  least,  may  be  said,  that  when  we  are  speaking  about 
the  evangelization  of  the  world,  we  seem  to  be  using  the 
word  in  a  larger  and  more  exact  meaning  apparently  than 
that  in  which  it  was  used  by  those  who  first  made  use  of 
the  term  in  the  New  Testament  Scriptures. 

We  can  see  from  their  methods  also  how  vitally  im- 
portant it  was.  Here  was  our  Lord  and  Master  with  all 
the  secrets  of  human  influence.  He  might  have  moved 
up  and  down  the  world  healing  the  sick,  feeding  the  hun- 
gry, doing  by  miracle  the  great  work  He  came  to  do.  He 
did  these  things,  but  it  is  perfectly  obvious  that  He  did 
them  not  as  ends  but  as  means  and  illustrations.  He  was 
bent  upon  introducing  a  new  order  of  personal  and  social 
life,  of  thought  about  God,  of  vital  relationship.  He 
made  this  central  and  dominant,  and  He  went  up  and 
down  speaking  to  men  out  of  His  own  life  the  message 
that  He  had  brought  and  that  He  was.  He  wrote  never 
a  word.  After  Him  came  another  man  who  had  a  doctor 
with  him,  and  we  read  only  seldom  of  any  healing  miracle 
either  of  skill  or  of  supernatural  power  wrought  by  Paul 
and  Luke  in  all  their  missionary  travels.  Paul  simply 
took  this  great  living  message — with  no  support  of  in- 
stitutional missions — and  planted  it  far  and  wide  across 
the  Roman  world.  That  was  the  beginning  of  the  morn- 
ing of  the  new  day  for  humanity.  What  St.  Paul  and  our 
Lord  did,  we  must  believe  to  be  the  first  thing  in  our 
missionary  activity  still. 

I  do  not  say  that  they  used  all  the  missionary  methods 
that  are  legitimate.  It  is  right  enough  and  necessary  for 
US  to  produce  our  Christian  literature,  though  our  Lord 


164:     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  KEW  WOELD 

wrote  never  a  word.  It  is  right  enough  and  necessary 
for  us  to  build  our  great  hospitals,  though  St.  Paul 
wrought  seldom  miracles.  It  is  not  only  right,  it  is  in- 
dispensable, to  use  education  and  philanthropy  to  repre- 
sent the  Gospel  in  ordinary  life  and  in  institutions.  The 
Board  I  serve  has  1,721  schools  and  colleges,  and  191 
hospitals  .and  dispensaries.  It  has  asylums  for  orphans, 
lepers  and  the  insane,  schools  for  the  blind  and  the  deaf 
and  dumb,  printing-presses,  homes  for  tuberculosis 
patients ;  and  men  and  women  are  needed  for  these,  and 
truly  serve  Christ  in  these;  and  rightly  conducted  these 
are  not  only  agencies  of  evangelization,  they  are  evan- 
gelization. Only  they  need  to  be  bathed  and  engulfed  in 
the  most  direct  and  persuasive  teaching  of  Christ  and 
His  Gospel,  and  men  and  women  who  are  looking  for- 
ward to  spending  the  greater  part  of  their  lives  in  ac- 
cessory activities  may  well  be  reminded  that  these  two, 
our  Lord  and  St.  Paul — whose  lives  were  the  most  power- 
ful lives  that  ever  have  been,  that  lie  at  the  foundation 
of  the  Christian  Church  and  of  the  modern  world — chose 
for  themselves  the  one  pure,  simple  undertaking  of  carry- 
ing the  living  message  straight  into  the  living  heart  of 
persons.  And  the  one  great  need  of  the  missionary  enter- 
prise to-day  is  for  men  and  women  who  will  follow  in 
their  footsteps. 

At  the  Continuation  Committee  Conferences  held 
throughout  Asia  in  1913,  every  national  conference  of  the 
four  that  were  held,  and  almost  every  one  of  the  separate 
district  conferences  that  were  held,  joined  in  saying  just 
what  was  said  at  the  All-China  Conference  at  Shanghai : 
"  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  has  laid  upon  His  Church  as  a 
primary  duty  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  to  all  nations. 
Times  come  in  the  history  of  nations  when  their  need  of 
the  message  of  life  becomes  manifestly  urgent.     It  is 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  THE  WOELD    165 

such  a  time  in  China  now,  and  in  God's  providence  there 
is  an  opportunity  corresponding  to  the  urgency  of  the 
need.  A  great  door  and  effectual  is  open  for  the  direct 
preaching  of  the  Gospel.  While  fully  recognizing  the 
great  evangelistic  value  of  the  educational,  medical,  and 
other  institutional  work,  the  conference  considers  it 
urgently  important"  at  the  present  time  to  provide  for, 
and  to  safeguard  the  maintenance  of,  an  adequate  supply 
of  workers,  Chinese  and  foreign,  for  the  organization 
and  prosecution  and  extension  of  purely  evangelistic 
work,  and  urges  that  a  due  proportion  of  funds  be  allo- 
cated for  the  effective  equipment  of  this  purpose."  The 
Continuation  Committee  Conference  in  Japan  appealed 
for  the  doubling  of  the  number  of  men  engaged  in  direct 
evangelistic  work,  and  for  the  largest  possible  measure  of 
unification  in  all  institutional  work,  in  order  that  men 
might  be  released  to  give  their  whole  time  and  strength 
to  that  to  which  our  Lord  and  St.  Paul  gave  theirs.  I 
believe  that  the  one  supreme  need  in  this  Movement,  in 
the  missionary  enterprise,  and  in  the  world  to-day,  is  that 
we  should  recover  the  old  ideal  and  emphasis  and  pro- 
portion of  the  early  Christian  Church  and  of  the  ministry 
of  our  Lord  Himself.  ' 

This  emphasis  upon  the  evangelization  of.  the  world 
in  this  generation,  I  make  bold  to  say,  should  govern  the 
proportion  of  our  missionary  appropriations;  it  should 
govern  the  classes  of  workers  that  we  send  out  to  the 
field ;  it  should  more  and  more  become  a  controlling  prin- 
ciple in  all  the  program  and  development  of  our  mission- 
ary undertaking.  And  that  it  may  become  this,  it  is 
necessary  that  this  same  emphasis  should  guide  men  in 
their  choice  of  their  life-work  if  the  needed  messengers 
are  to  be  found.  And  this  means  that  greatly  increased 
tides  of  our  ablest  men  should  be  pouring  into  the  Chris- 


166      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

tian  ministry.  Every  other  profession  is  overcrowded. 
A  man  going  into  law  or  medicine  or  engineering  can 
hardly  get  a  foothold  for  himself  from  which  he  does 
not  crowd  away  a  competing  man.  The  only  Hne  of 
activity  in  the  world  to-day  of  which  I  know  that  is  com- 
peting for  men,  where  men  do  not  need  to  compete  for 
place,  is  the  kind  of  work  that  our  Lord  Himself  did  at 
the  very  beginning.  There  is  need  for  great  bodies  of 
men  to  push  out  into  the  Christian  ministry  at  home  and 
abroad.  If  one  were  choosing  to-day  any  line  of  activity 
in  this  country,  knowing  pretty  well,  too,  where  men  of 
power  and  influence  in  our  country  are  to  be  found,  he 
need  not  hesitate  one  moment.  There  is  no  sphere  on 
this  continent  to-day  comparable  in  influence  and  power 
and  lucrativeness  of  moral  return  with  the  place  that  is 
open  to  true  men  inside  the  Christian  ministry.  And  this 
is  emphatically  true  regarding  the  mission  field  abroad. 
Its  most  insistent,  far-reaching  call  is  for  men  who  will 
not  need  Saul's  armour ;  for  men  who  will  go  out  unen- 
cumbered, with  the  same  clear,  unaccoutered  message  that 
Christ  bore,  that  St.  Paul  bore  after  Him,  to  the  open 
mind  and  heart  of  the  non-Christian  world. 

This  emphasis  should  dominate  not  only  the  men  of 
whom  I  am  speaking,  still  free  to  make  their  choice  of 
life's  calling.  It  should  dominate  all  of  us,  no  matter 
what  our  particular  profession  or  calling  may  be.  Those 
men  who  are  going  out  to  the  mission  field  to  engage  in 
educational  work  should  make  evangelism  the  primary 
purpose  and  the  dominant  thing  in  their  own  lives.  Alex- 
ander Duff  did  that  in  India,  and  his  stamp  is  there  to-day. 
Calvin  Mateer  did  just  that  in  China,  and  his  mark  re- 
mains still  upon  China.  S.  R.  Brown  and  Guido  Ver- 
beck  did  it  in  Japan,  and  Japan  may  forget  but  never  will 
lose  their  impress.     The  men  who  are  going  out  into 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  THE  WOELD    167 

medical  work  have  no  right  to  relegate  this  evangelistic 
purpose  to  any  secondary  place.  The  missionary  con- 
science requires  of  them  that  they  shall  be  just  as  scrupu- 
lous and  true  in  their  oral  statement  of  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  and  their  living  utterance  of  it  as  that  they  should 
do  honest  work  in  operating-room  or  laboratory.  I  have 
seen  Dr.  John  G.  Kerr,  one  of  the  greatest  medical  mis- 
sionaries of  his  time,  a  man  who  performed  perhaps  more 
operations  than  any  other  surgeon  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury— I  have  seen  him  again  and  again,  like  a  father 
among  his  children,  while  he  spoke,  as  one  who  loved 
them,  to  the  men  and  women  and  little  children  of  the 
Saviour,  whom  he  loved  most  of  all.  We  know  the  rule 
in  Dr.  Mackenzie's  hospital  in  Tientsin,  where  the  clinic 
had  to  be  finished  by  noon,  all  dressings  attended  to,  and 
the  hospital  cleaned  for  the  day.  Then  he  and  every 
attendant  spent  the  whole  afternoon  going  about  from  cot 
to  cot  to  the  Chinese  who  had  placed  themselves  under  his 
care,  telling  of  the  Great  Physician  and  His  healing  power 
in  the  soul.  In  any  line  of  our  activity  we  are  untrue  to 
the  watchword,  we  are  untrue  to  our  mission,  we  are 
untrue  to  our  Lord,  if  we  do  not  lay  emphasis  where  He 
laid  it  in  His  own  life  and  in  His  own  work. 

This  emphasis  is  necessary  if  the  motive  is  to  be  found 
by  which  our  task  is  to  be  done.  I  wish  there  were  space 
to  reproduce  the  utterances  of  Rufus  Anderson,  the  most 
acute  and  courageous  student  of  missionary  policy  that 
this  country  has  produced,  in  which  he  shows  that  it  is 
this  evangelistic  motive  alone  that  will  carry  men  out  to 
a  real  life-work,  that  will  hold  them  there  against  all 
discouragements  and  limitations,  so  that  they  will  not  go 
home  if  the  conditions  are  not  all  pleasing ;  that  no  other 
motive  will  lead  them  out  in  the  volunteer  spirit  that 
flung  Isaiah  down  before  the  lifted  Lord  in  the  temple 


168     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

in  the  year  King  Uzziah  died,  but  the  holy  motive  that  lies 
at  the  deepest  roots  of  the  human  soul,  a  motive  found 
in  evangelistic  passion  for  the  Christ  who  would  save 
the  whole  world  of  men. 

No  other  emphasis  than  this  will  bring  us  the  adequate 
motive,  none  other  secure  the  longed-for  result.  The 
great  trouble  with  the  world  is  not  intellectual  ignorance ; 
it  is  not  environment;  it  is  simply  unredeemed  personal 
wills,  and  nothing  will  ever  cut  home  to  the  roots  of  all 
the  world's  appalling  need  but  the  power  that  penetrates 
to  the  depths  of  life  and  relates  men  in  the  springs  of 
their  being  to  God,  the  fountain  and  foundation  of  all 
truth  and  holiness  and  strength.  And  if  our  ideal  is  the 
evangelization  of  the  world,  and  we  believe,  as  we  do, 
that  that  can  be  accomplished  only  by  establishing  in  all 
these  lands  great  native  Churches  that  will  make  Christ 
known  to  their  own  people,  will  any  one  tell  us  how  we 
can  produce  an  evangelistic  native  Church  under  the 
influence  of  institutionalized  foreign  missions  alone?  The 
native  Church  is  going  to  be  not  what  we  tell  it  to  be,  but 
what  it  sees  that  we  are;  and  the  only  way  whereby  we 
can  ever  penetrate  and  pervade  these  great  national 
Churches,  which  are  growing  up,  with  a  spirit  that  will 
make  them  as  burning  and  shining  lights  throughout  all 
the  darkness  of  these  lands,  is  by  setting  before  them,  as 
St.  Paul  set  before  the  early  Church,  as  our  Lord  set  be- 
fore the  Twelve  in  the  school  in  which  He  trained  them, 
first  things  in  first  places. 

Finally,  it  is  this  emphasis  alone  that  will  give  us  our 
power.  We  must  get  beyond  our  trust  in  buildings,  in 
appropriations,  in  equipment,  in  all  material  resources. 
The  finite  things  are  obviously  necessary,  but  so  long  as 
our  confidence  is  in  these  finite  things  alone  our  strength 
will  be  merely  finite  strength.    We  must  strip  ourselves 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  THE  WOELD    169 

from  all  such  reliances  and  be  content  to  go  out  with 
Christ  and  His  pure  Gospel  as  our  one  message,  our  one 
burden,  our  one  reliance.  And  when  the  hour  comes  that 
we  have  brought  ourselves  to  that  dependence,  there  will 
come,  as  there  came  nineteen  hundred  years  ago,  the 
sound  as  of  the  rushing  of  a  mighty  wind,  and  weak  men 
will  rise  in  a  new  strength,  timid  men  will  find  them- 
selves facing  the  world  with  a  new  courage,  and  the 
morning  of  the  world's  redemption  will  have  broken  at 
last. 

Would  that  to-day  Christ  might  be  able  to  find  among 
us  men  and  women  of  this  heart,  men  and  women  to 
whom  Christ  Himself  is  the  only  reality,  to  whom  Christ 
is  all  in  all,  who  have  only  one  passion — Him,  only  Him. 
Surely,  when  we  are  still  and  listen  for  Him,  we  may 
hear  Him  calling  unmistakably  for  such  hearts  now : 

I  hear  the  voice 

Of  one  who  calleth, 

Calleth  sweet  and  clear, 

For  men  to  reap  for  Him 

A  harvest  white. 

Oh,  soul  of  mine,  rise  up  and  answer  Him 

Before  the  night. 

The  long  night  falleth. 

And  the  day  be  gone,  thy  day  be  gone. 


VIII 

THE  RELATIONSHIP  OF  MISSIONARY 
EDUCATION  TO  EVANGELISM 

THE  subject  of  the  relations  of  missionary  educa- 
tion to  evangelism  opens  up  one  of  the  largest 
fields  of  missionary  discussion  in  the  whole  area 
of  missionary  policy.  We  may  hope  to  deal  with  only  a 
few  aspects  of  the  problem.  I  shall  select  four  of  these. 
I.  First  of  all,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  we  are  all  ready 
to  accept  the  view  that  education  itself,  true  education,  is 
in  reality  evangelism.  It  is  a  dissolution  of  error,  and 
all  error  obstructs  the  conquest  of  light.  It  is  a  com- 
munication of  truth,  and  all  truth  is  one  truth,  the  truth 
of  Him  who  is  One  and  all  in  all.  Much  unnecessary 
conflict  can  be  escaped  and  our  entire  thought  both  of 
education  and  evangelism  made  much  more  rich  and  true, 
if  we  are  willing  to  take  this  view  of  the  promulgation 
of  all  truth  as  something  that  in  its  nature  is  essentially 
and  fundamentally  evangelistic.  That  view  is  set  forth 
very  clearly,  and  with  a  rather  new  note,  in  one  of  the 
deliverances  of  the  Shanghai  Centenary  Missionary  Con- 
ference, among  the  findings  of  the  Commission  on  Educa- 
tion: 

"  When  we  reflect  that  there  is  a  gospel  of  creation, 
and  a  gospel  of  the  divine  government  of  the  world  as 
well  as  a  gospel  of  redemption,  we  see  that  the  founding 
of  the  school  and  college  is  a  necessary  duty  of  the  mis- 
sionary.    In  later  years  since  men's  conceptions  as  to 

170 


MISSIOiTARY  EDUCATION  AND  EVANGELISM  171 

the  function  of  the  Christian  Church  in  the  world  have 
been  enlarged,  we  understand  that  we  are  not  only  work- 
ing for  the  salvation  of  separate  individuals,  but  for 
society  as  a  whole.  Our  great  ideal  is  the  establishment 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth.  We  aim  at  influenc- 
ing all  the  strata  of  society.  Christianity  is  to  save  the 
world  and  to  bring  all  human  relationships,  political, 
social,  commercial,  and  industrial,  into  harmony  with  the 
laws  of  God.  The  imparting  of  an  enlightened  and 
Christian  education  is  one  of  the  great  means  for  the 
accomplishment  of  this  end." 

The  memorial  of  this  Conference  to  the  Home  Churches 
is  not  so  satisfactory  as  a  statement  of  missionary  aim, 
because  it  kaleidoscopes  some  very  divergent  functions  in 
the  field  of  education,  functions  of  the  state  and  func- 
tions of  the  Christian  Church,  which  is  to  abide,  and 
functions  of  the  foreign  mission,  which  is  a  temporary 
institution  and  agency.  But  as  a  statement  of  Christi- 
anity, of  the  nature  of  our  undertaking  and  of  the  results 
that  we  seek  ultimately  to  achieve,  It  is,  I  think,  a  legiti- 
mate word.  And  I  have  often  wished  that  I  had  a  judg- 
ment which  I  heard  delivered  once  by  one  of  the  justices 
of  the  Court  of  Appeals  of  the  State  of  New  York  on 
the  same  subject.  It  is  not  recorded,  as  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  find.  In  any  of  the  printed  deliverances  of 
the  Court;  but  it  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  mis- 
sionary statements  that  I  have  ever  heard.  It  was  in  a 
case  over  the  validity  of  the  will  of  a  woman  who  left 
her  entire  estate  to  the  Presbyterian  Board  of  Foreign 
Missions,  specifying  that  It  was  to  be  used  for  higher 
education  In  the  mission  field.  A  great  many  distant 
relatives  who  had  displayed  no  interest  in  the  old  lady 
while  she  was  living  were  very  soHcitous  lest  her  money 
be  illegally  spent  now  that  she  was  gone.  In  contesting 
the  validity  of  the  will,  they  came  down  at  last  to  this, 


172     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELB 

that  it  was  not  competent  for  a  missionary  Board,  or- 
ganized and  operating  to  propagate  Christianity,  to  carry 
on  so-called  secular  education,  especially  higher  educa- 
tion. And  it  was  on  that  issue  that  the  case  was  tried 
before  Justice  Benton  in  the  city  of  Rochester.  Pro- 
fessor Beach  and  I  went  there  to  present  the  case  in  behalf 
of  the  Board.  After  we  had  made  our  statement,  the 
contestants  asked  permission  to  make  their  argument. 
Justice  Benton  said  in  substance,  "  There  is  nothing  more 
to  be  said.  I  am  going  to  settle  this  case  right  now.  Re- 
ligion is  light.  It  always  has  been  light.  Whatever 
expresses  light  expresses  and  spreads  religion.  Whatever 
spreads  religion  spreads  light  and  truth.  God  is  all  one 
Truth  and  this  corporation  in  spreading  truth  and  dis- 
solving error  and  wiping  the  mists  from  men's  minds  is 
carrying  forward  legitimately  the  purposes  of  its  incor- 
poration." 

This  is  very  much  the  same  view  our  friends  in  China 
took  in  the  Centenary  Conference; — whatever  dispels 
darkness,  whatever  lets  light  and  truth  into  the  minds  of 
men  is  essentially  evangelistic.  It  is  preparing  for  the 
Gospel,  even  when  it  may  not  be  directly  and  explicitly 
an  expression  of  the  Gospel.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
all  expansion  of  any  kind  of  knowledge  is  necessarily 
evangelistic.  To  teach  a  man  the  truth  of  the  mechanics 
of  drills  and  bits  and  the  chemistry  of  high  explosives 
may  make  him  a  clever  safe-breaker  and  not  bring  him 
to  Jesus  Christ  at  all.  The  mere  expansion  of  knowledge 
does  not  necessarily  carry  with  it  evangelism,  or  have  any 
influence  on  character.  But  that  kind  of  expansion  is 
not,  to  our  minds,  true  education.  True  education,  to 
our  minds.  Is  drawing  out  the  latent  possibilities  of  char- 
acter and  grafting  in  on  these  latent  possibilities  all  that 
can  be  introduced  to  qualify  men  for  the  most  efficient 


MISSION AEY  EDUCATION  AND  EVANGELISM  173 

service  of  their  fellows,  the  enlarging  of  their  relation- 
ships to  the  truth,  which,  according  to  the  definition  of 
our  Lord,  is  life.  We  conceive  these  things  to  be  true 
education,  and  whatever  does  these  things  we  are  ready 
to  say  should  be  thought  of  as  a  distinctly  evangelistic 
contribution. 

2.  But  this  view  of  missionary  education  is  not  ade- 
quate. It  is  true  and  valid  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  the  aims 
and  purposes  and  influences  of  missionary  education 
should  be  evangelistic  in  an  ampler  and  more  penetrating 
sense  than  I  have  thus  far  indicated.  Our  charters  re- 
quire that  it  should  be  so.  No  man  having  noted  the 
terms  of  these  acts  would  be  satisfied  that  he  was  carry- 
ing out  their  specifications  in  education,  if  he  did  not  look 
at  evangelism  in  a  larger  sense  than  the  sense  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking.  These  charters  specify  that  we 
are  to  propagate  Christianity,  to  make  men  Christians. 
They  lay  on  us  the  evangelistic  obligation  in  the  richest 
and  most  concrete  New  Testament  sense,  and  we  are 
not  loyal  to  these  acts  of  incorporation  unless  we  define 
missionary  education  more  carefully.  We  know  also 
that  the  men  and  women  who  are  giving  the  funds  for  the 
carrying  on  of  this  enterprise  are  not  giving  them  for 
what  we  sometimes  call  in  misleading  phraseology,  "  mere 
secular  education."  We  appeal  for  these  funds  on  dis- 
tinctly evangelical  grounds,  and  it  is  that  motive  that  lies 
at  the  root  of  most  missionary  giving.  I  cannot  speak 
for  all  the  missionary  agencies,  but  I  am  sure  I  am  speak- 
ing for  most  of  them,  if  not  all.  It  is  this  motive  that 
lies  at  the  root  of  the  interest  and  sacrifice  and  prayer 
and  giving  that  maintain  our  missionary  operations 
abroad.  Unless  w^e  define  education  in  more  distinct 
terms,  we  should  not  be  loyal  or  faithful  trustees  in  deal- 
ing with  the  responsibility  laid  upon  us. 


174      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

Furthermore,  this  is  demanded  by  our  own  aim,  quite 
apart  from  any  obligation  we  owe  to  acts  of  incorporation 
or  trusteeship.  Our  own  sense  of  what  we  are  in  this 
work  for,  of  the  use  for  which  our  lives  are  given  to  us, 
compels  us  to  think  that  something  more  than  this  must 
be  meant  when  we  speak  of  education  as  an  evangelistic 
agency.  Perhaps  all  would  not  be  willing  to  go  as  far 
as  Professor  Lindsay  of  Glasgow.  Having  come  back 
from  India  thirty  years  ago  from  a  deputation  from  the 
Free  Church  of  Scotland,  which  had  been  sent  to  investi- 
gate the  legitimacy  of  the  educational  work  of  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland,  he  and  his  associate,  Mr.  Daly,  said : 

"  To  begin  with,  we  must  lay  it  down  as  a  prfnciple  that 
the  one  absorbing  aim  in  all  real  mission  work  is  to  bring 
our  fellow-men  to  know  Jesus  Christ  to  be  their  Saviour, 
and  to  profess  their  faith  in  Him  in  baptism.  The  mis- 
sion work  of  the  Church  is  done  in  obedience  to  the  com- 
mand of  the  Lord,  *  Go  ye  therefore  and  teach  all  nations, 
baptizing  them  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  and  the  Son, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost.*  Every  mission,  and  all  mission 
methods,  must  in  the  end  submit  to  this  test.  Therefore, 
in  discussing  the  mission  value  of  educational  missions, 
we  must  put  aside  all  arguments  drawn  from  the  spread 
of  humanitarian  and  civilizing  ideas.  These  are  welcome 
accompaniments,  but,  after  all,  the  question  is — Is  all  this 
educational  work  calculated  to  draw  men  to  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  as  their  Saviour,  and  to  a  profession  of  that  faith 
in  baptism  ?  " 

Professor  Lindsay  was  one  of  the  most  broad-minded 
students  of  church  history  in  Scotland  at  that  time.  He 
never  for  one  moment  thought  that  he  was  hampering 
missionary  education,  or  narrowing  it,  by  giving  this  as 
its  ultimate  purpose.  Instead,  he  was  conceiving  mis- 
sionary education  in  far  richer  terms  than  education  was 
conceived  at  home.  He  held  that  it  is  not  enough  to  say 
that  education,  just  because  it  teaches  the  truth  about 


MISSIONAEY  EDUCATION  AND  EVANGELISM  175 

nature,  because  it  lays  the  foundation  for  what  the  older 
men  called  natural  theology,  is  therefore  sufficiently  evan- 
gelistic. He  held  and  we  hold  that  education  must  be 
more  evangelistic  than  that,  that  it  must  contemplate  as 
its  distinct  and  acknowledged  aim  (and  that  that  aim 
must  be  practically  dominant  in  the  way  in  which  educa- 
tion is  carried  on),  that  it  is  the  purpose  of  this  education 
to  win  men  to  the  Christian  faith  and  Christian  character 
and  send  them  out  as  professing  servants  of  Jesus  Christ 
in  the  fullness  of  His  life  and  in  the  fullness  of  His  min- 
istry. And  so  conceived,  education  is  as  legitimate  as  an 
evangelistic  agency  as  travelling  around  the  country  on 
itinerary  trips  and  speaking  to  groups  of  village  people, 
carrying  on  chapel  preaching  or  any  of  those  other  activi- 
ties of  which  we  speak  as  distinctly  evangelistic. 

3.  Again,  education  is  absolutely  indispensable  as  an 
evangelistic  agency.  In  many  regards  there  is  no  more 
effective  form  of  evangelistic  work  than  that  which  educa- 
tion affords.  In  the  first  place,  it  gives  access  to  classes 
otherwise  almost  inaccessible,  to  social  groups  and  bodies  '^ 
of  religious  opinion  otherwise  closed  to  us.  How  other- 
wise, except  by  medical  work,  would  we  have  been  able 
to  touch  the  Mohammedan  world  ?  How  otherwise  would 
we  be  reaching  certain  great  social  strata  in  India  ?  The 
educational  method  opens  to  us  the  doors  of  evangelistic 
opportunity  which  our  other  methods  do  not  open.  In 
the  second  place,  it  operates  in  those  areas  with  con- 
tinuous power.  One  wants  to  emphasize  both  of  those 
words.  It  operates  with  continuous  power.  Evangel- 
istic work  at  the  best  operates  now  and  then.  Even  a 
prolonged  evangelistic  campaign  represents  only  an  occa- 
sional pressure  upon  the  conscience  and  mind,  while  in 
'educational  missions  we  have  our  congregation  before 
us  day  in  and  day  out,  night  in  and  night  out,  the  year 


176     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

around  and  for  years.  It  is  a  method  that  operates  with 
continuous  power.  For  the  most  part  our  evangelistic 
method  is  intelUgible  to  the  mature;  but  here  we  work 
upon  the  plastic  mind,  on  the  life  that  is  not  yet  hardened 
and  that  comes  into  our  hands  under  conditions  giving  us 
quasi-parental  relationship  to  it.  In  the  third  place,  it 
sets  back  fires  blazing.  Or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  it  under- 
cuts and  saps  all  the  while  that  the  frontal  attack  is  being 
made.  It  pervades  society  unawares  with  great  trans- 
forming ideas.  The  very  teaching  of  the  English  lan- 
guage is  intellectually  revolutionary;  it  inevitably  carries 
with  it  conceptions  that  burst  the  grave-clothes  of  the  old 
institutions  and  ideas.  At  Wellesley  one  Sunday  I  heard 
Rabindranath  Tagore.  He  was  reading  songs  and  prayers 
of  the  village  people  of  India.  He  prefaced  them  with 
an  interesting  statement  about  the  troubadours  and  folk 
singers.  But  the  deeply  interesting  thing  was  that  he 
could  not  translate  one  of  them  in  perfect  loyalty  to  the 
original  language  and  ideas.  He  could  after  a  fashion 
put  them  over  into  our  tongue,  but  there  was  a  sense  in 
which  he  could  not  reincarnate  them.  His  English  educa- 
tion and  atmosphere  of  mind  altered  the  fundamental  as- 
sumptions and  ideas.  He  could  not  detach  himself  from 
the  slow,  shifting  process  that  operates  through  the  in- 
tellectual life  of  a  race.  The  undercutting  of  inadequate 
ideas  of  God  and  of  the  relationships  that  bind  men  to- 
gether in  society  is  one  of  the  great  services  of  educa- 
tion in  these  lands.  Education  is  doing  this  very  thing. 
And  the  argument  addressed  to  us  in  behalf  o^  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  Christian  university  of  the  highest  grade  in 
Japan  rests  upon  this  conviction,  that  we  need  such  a 
power  to  cooperate  with  the  direct  and  simple  proclama- 
tion of  the  Gospel  in  introducing  the  principles  of  Christ 
in  the  life  of  Japan. 


MISSIOjSTAEY  education  and  evangelism  177 

In  the  fourth  place,  educational  work  benefits  evan- 
gelism, not  in  these  ways  only,  but  also  by  operating  upon 
nature  and  habit  as  Horace  Bushnell  describes  its  method, 
particularly  in  his  address  on  the  *'Age  of  Homespun," 
and  in  the  recollections  of  his  home  training.  It  was  not 
so  much  what  he  got  in  Yale  or  in  any  university,  but 
what  he  got  in  his  old  home  in  Litchfield  County,  under 
the  steady  habit-forming  hands  of  a  mother,  who  did 
more  for  Bushnell  than  any  other  teacher,  that  formed 
his  mind  and  character.  Home  influence  has  more 
effect  upon  the  life  of  a  man  than  any  school.  One 
of  the  supreme  values  of  education  is  the  way  in  which, 
if  it  is  true  education,  it  holds  the  boys  and  girls  under 
the  steady  pressure  of  habit- forming  influences.  And  the 
most  powerful  of  them  is  the  picture  of  truth  that  they 
see  incarnated  before  them  in  Christian  personality,  bear- 
ing in  upon  mind  and  will  with  unconscious  and  trans- 
forming constraint. 

Education  is  essential  to  evangelism  also,  because  it 
raises  up  our  leaders.  It  raises  up  leaders  for  the  Church, 
in  the  state  and  in  industry.  It  is  interesting  to  see  how, 
whatever  the  theory  a  mission  starts  out  with  may  be, 
it  is  driven  inevitably  by  the  pressure  of  the  facts  and 
conditions  to  this  view,  either  to  do  education  itself  or 
else  to  snuggle  against  any  neighbouring  missions  that 
have  a  larger  policy  which  will  do  the  education  for  it. 
We  cannot  look  anywhere  in  the  world  to-day  and  find  a 
fruitful  mission  that  started  out  as  a  so-called  purely 
evangelistic  mission  that  v/as  not  driven  either  itself  to 
incorporate  educational  aims  into  its  policy  or  else  to 
relate  itself  to  other  missions  which,  by  specialization  of 
function  or  more  comprehensive  program,  would  be  able 
to  do  what  it  had  been  unprepared  itself  to  do. 

In  these  regards,  education  is  not  only  evangelistic  in 


178     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD^ 

the  partial  sense  of  which  I»spoke  at  the  beginning;  it  is 
absolutely  indispensable  as  an  evangelistic  agency  in  these 
other  regards. 

4.  And  now,  fourthly,  what  are  we  to  do  in  order 
that  we  may  be  enabled  to  get  our  educational  work  more 
fully  to  achieve  its  missionary  aim,  more  fully  to  do  those 
things  which  in  some  partial  measure  we  all  of  us  recog- 
nize that  it  has  been  doing?  There  is  much  discontent 
throughout  all  the  mission  fields  to-day  with  regard  to 
the  inadequacy  of  the  evangelistic  character  and  fruitage 
of  our  educational  work.  There  is  discontent  with  re- 
gard to  the  disproportion  of  expenditure  and  assignment 
of  men.  Scarcely  a  thoughtful  missionary  student  goes 
out  to  the  East  and  tries  to  see  the  facts  with  an  unbiased 
mind  who  does  not  come  back  feeling  that  our  great  need 
is  for  an  immense  enlargement  of  the  directly  evan- 
gelistic forces  operating  in  those  lands.  The  sapping 
action  of  literary  work  and  education  has  outrun  the 
gathering  in  of  the  evangelistic  results,  the  evangelistic 
fruitage.  Unless  we  want  this  discontent  to  grow,  with 
the  result  that  the  old  controversies  will  spring  up  again 
that  were  flourishing  when  this  report  of  Professor  Lind- 
say was  written,  and  unless  we  want  the  old  issues  to 
come  back  again  with  more  power  and  to  do  more  harm 
than  ever  because  our  work  is  taking  so  much  greater 
scope,  we  must  face  this  question  candidly  and  coura- 
geously as  to  how  we  are  going  to  make  our  educational 
work  evangelistic,  not  only  in  its  ideal,  but  in  its  output. 
First  of  all,  by  discerning  more  clearly  and  dealing  more 
fearlessly  and  directly  with  the  great  dangers  of  which 
we  are  aware.  One  of  them  is  the  danger  of  sending  out 
from  our  institutions  men  who  will  be  against  the  Gospel 
as  well  as  men  who  will  stand  for  it.  The  very  agencies 
that  are  preparing  men  for  leadership  are  preparing  men 


MISSION AEY  EDUCATION  AND  EVANGELISM  179 

for  hostile  as  well  as  helpful  leadership.  It  is  a  signifi- 
cant thing  in  Siam  that  the  King  was  educated  at  Oxford, 
He  is  delivering  lectures  to  the  young  men  of  Siam,  ex- 
horting them  to  maintain  Buddhism,  and  saying  that  his 
preference  of  Buddhism  is  not  blind,  because  he  sur- 
passed the  English  boys  in  Bible  examinations.  We  have 
to  remember  that  men  may  go  out  from  our  schools 
hardened  against  the  Gospel,  if  they  do  not  go  out  for  it. 
But  there  is  a  middle  area.  There  are  many  men  in 
India  and  Japan  who  will  not  be  against  us  or  on  our 
side.  These  constitute  one  of  the  great  fields  of  work 
that  is  not  being  adequately  cared  for;  but  I  am  speak- 
ing now  of  this  first  danger,  of  training  men  who  are  go- 
ing to  be  our  strongest  and  most  resourceful  antagonists. 

In  the  second  place,  there  is  a  great  danger  of  which 
we  hear  expression  in  practically  every  mission  school  of 
whatever  grade  in  the  world.  It  has  to  do  with  the  in- 
adequate work  of  the  school.  Men  are  so  burdened  with 
the  work  of  the  curricula,  etc.,  that  there  is  no  energy 
or  strength  left  to  do  what  they  would  gladly  do,  if  they 
had  the  strength  and  the  energy.  One  of  the  most  im- 
pressive statements  I  have  seen  of  this  was  made  by  Mr. 
Hogg  of  the  Christian  College  in  Madras,  in  which  he 
spoke  frankly  of  the  enormous  waste  that  was  taking 
place,  simply  because  they  were  all  so  encumbered  with 
many  things  which  they  had  to  do  that  they  could  not  do 
other  things  which  they  ought  to  have  done  as  Christ's 
representatives. 

And  thirdly,  we  need  to  beware  of  overloading  our  col- 
leges with  students.  It  is  the  old  question  of  extension 
or  intension.  Teachers  are  reluctant  to  give  up  the  op- 
portunity to  influence  as  large  a  number  of  students  as 
possible  instead  of  limiting  their  work  to  the  intensive  in- 
fluencing of  fewer  students.     I  met  the  problem  recently 


180     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

in  Silliman  Institute  in  the  Philippine  Islands.  The  year 
before  the  school  had  over  seven  hundred  boys  where  it 
could  have  had  a  thousand  or  fifteen  hundred.  Many 
people  argued  against  the  intensive  policy.  They  said, 
"  This  is  our  chance  to  interest  these  boys.  Ten  years 
from  now  we  can  do  intensive  work.  Our  wider  oppor- 
tunity may  be  gone  then,  but  now  this  is  our  chance  to 
make  these  boys  our  friends.  Let  us  take  them  all  in." 
But  we  must  face  the  fact  that  as  soon  as  we  bid  for  the 
mass  we  may  diminish  our  efficiency.  We  miss  our 
chance  to  deal  with  the  individual  man.  We  have  to 
face  the  fact  that  if  we  choose  the  many,  the  results  of 
our  work  may  be  desirable,  but  they  may  be  also  of  a 
different  quality. 

There  is  the  fourth  danger  of  overloading  ourselves 
not  merely  with  the  total  mass  of  students,  but  with  a 
non-Christian  mass  of  students.  Even  if  you  are  going 
to  have  a  small  institution  and  have  it  dominated  by  the 
non-Christian  element,  the  Christian  boys  cannot  stand 
up  against  the  pressure.  We  know  the  truth  of  that,  for 
it  is  just  as  it  is  in  America.  It  is  the  atmosphere  that 
surrounds  the  boy  that  is  going  to  shape  him. 

In  the  fifth  place,  under  the  pressure  of  these  perils 
many  men  will  sink  back  into  the  first  position  and  will 
be  satisfied  with  the  kind  of  evangelistic  influence  that  is 
inadequate.  They  will  say,  "  Oh,  well,  it  is  true  we  are 
not  sending  out  Christian  men ;  we  wish  we  could ;  but  we 
are  doing  them  good.  We  are  helping  them  in  their 
battle  with  temptation.  We  are  teaching  them  the  truth 
about  the  world  and  w^e  are  undermining  their  super- 
stitions." There  is  danger  that  some  will  be  content  with 
just  that. 

5.  And  now  one  may  offer  a  half  dozen  positive  sug- 
gestions.    First,  there  is  the  question  of  the  kind  of  men 


MISSIOl^AEY  EDUCATION  AND  EVANGELISM  181 

who  are  going  into  the  educational  work.  It  is  not  a 
matter  alone  of  having  skillful  teachers  who  have  ade- 
quate educational  preparation.  It  is  not  wholly  a  matter  of 
what  we  call  personality,  which  so  many  times  is  not  in 
our  control  at  all.  The  teacher-qualities  wanted  are 
things  that  are  within  the  reach  of  men — sincerity,  gen- 
uine interest,  good-will,  contagious  love,  compassionate 
and  sacrificial  surrender  of  a  man's  life  to  the  dominating 
aim.  Now,  we  cannot  plead  the  fact  that  these  things 
were  not  born  in  us  as  a  reason  for  not  having  them.  No 
school  can  give  them  to  us.  We  need  to  remember  that 
they  are  part  of  our  birthright— this  contagious  love,  good- 
will and  disposition  to  sacrifice.  In  another  old  educa- 
tional document,  a  report  on  Educational  Missions  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland,  is  a  letter  from  Dr.  Wardlaw 
Thompson.  He  points  out  that  the  great  thing  is  to  get 
for  missionary  teachers  men  and  women  able  to  love. 
Suppose  we  were  to  pick  out  the  men  and  women  who 
really  have  made  us.  In  almost  every  case  it  would  be 
some  unknown  man  or  some  unknown  woman  who  had 
this  inner  gift  of  sacrificial  devotion  which  gave  them 
access  and  power,  and  enabled  them  to  pass  that  power 
into  our  lives.  We  have  to  get  men  w^ho  have  zeal  for 
making  our  schools  in  the  highest  degree  educationally 
efficient,  using  ''educational"  in  its  technical  connota- 
tion. But  no  men  of  zeal  of  that  kind  will  ever  take  the 
place  of  religious  men,  men  who  are  really  filled  with  the 
spirit  of  Christ,  in  whom  Christ  dwells,  and  who  seek  in 
love  and  faith  to  lead  men  to  Christ  as  their  Saviour. 

In  the  second  place,  we  need  to  flood  our  institutions 
with  an  overwhelming  Christian  spirit.  This  is  a  very 
difficult  thing  to  do  anywhere,  even  here  in  America 
where  we  have  more  or  less  Christian  inheritance  and 
environment.     How  much  more  difficult  will  it  be  in  those 


182     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

lands  where  the  whole  inheritance  is  Pagan  and  where 
all  the  surrounding  influence  is  against  the  school !  Now, 
it  may  be  impossible  to  get  enough  men  or  women  who 
are  filled  with  an  irresistible  zeal  and  with  a  Christian 
spirit.  But  there  could  be  a  great  many  more  of  them  than 
there  are  in  some  of  our  mission  schools.  There  is  more 
of  the  zeal  and  spirit  now  in  some  schools  than  in  others. 
In  some  schools  we  feel  the  aroma  of  such  personal  in- 
fluence all  through  the  school,  up  and  down  the  corridors 
and  in  every  room.  It  must  be  there.  It  must  be  there 
more  and  more  in  our  missions  and  mission  schools ;  and 
no  amount  of  formal  instruction  or  required  religious 
worship  will  ever  suffice  to  accomplish  the  end,  if  these 
dynamic  influences  are  not  operating. 

In  the  third  place,  I  believe  in  required  religious  in- 
struction and  required  worship.  I  believe  in  it  in  the 
United  States.  I  do  not  see  why  an  institution  should 
require  students  to  attend  classes  in  astronomy  and 
physics  and  that  yet  there  should  be  question  as  to 
whether  they  should  study  religion.  I  do  not  see  how 
they  can  be  required  to  take  part  in  athletics  and  yet 
raise  the  question  as  to  whether  they  shall  attend  the 
worship  of  the  institution.  Religion  and  worship  ought 
to  be  integral  parts  of  the  life  of  the  institution.  Re- 
quired chapel  is  not  so  objectionable  to  the  students  who 
are  required  to  go;  the  man  on  whom  it  is  hard  is  the 
preacher  who  has  to  preach  to  them.  Required  religious 
instruction  is  no  hardship  to  the  students.  But  it  is  a 
hard  and  solemn  work  for  the  man  who  has  to  give  the 
instruction.  But  for  what  else  is  he  a  missionary  teacher, 
or  indeed  a  true  teacher  at  all  ? 

In  the  fourth  place,  we  ought  to  fill  our  educational 
institutions  in  the  interest  of  evangelism  with  a  great  deal 
of  personal  dealing  between  the  teachers  and  students. 


MISSION AEY  EDUCATION  AND  EVANGELISM  183 

It  is  desirable  in  the  interest  of  education  also  that  the 
school  do  this.  There  is  not  nearly  enough  of  it.  And 
we  have  to  bear  this  in  mind  when  people  argue  that  we 
should  fill  our  schools  up  with  a  thousand  or  two  thousand 
students.  When  we  see  a  student  body  of  that  size  and 
a  faculty  of  ten  or  twenty,  the  inevitable  conclusion  is 
that  the  individual  student  does  not  get  the  attention  he 
ought  to  have.  A  great  deal  of  the  most  important  teach- 
ing and  even  the  dealing  with  the  individual  student  is 
rolled  off  on  an  unqualified  native  assistant.  There  must 
be  room  and  strength  for  personal  work,  and  it  must  be 
done  by  the  teachers  themselves.  It  is  an  empty  delusion 
that  you  can  employ  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretary  to  evangelize 
the  boys  of  the  school  or  college  or  that  you  can  call  in 
an  evangelistic  missionary  who  has  a  circuit  through  the 
country  and  have  him  do  in  a  day  for  the  students  what 
the  man  whom  the  student  sees  every  day  does  not  do. 
Perhaps  he  is  willing  to  do  everything  else,  but  is  not 
willing  to  do  that.  I  came  across  a  little  bit  of  biography 
the  other  day  in  a  magazine.  It  was  from  Bishop  W.  F. 
McDowell : 

"  I  cannot  escape  the  influence  that  surrounded  me  in 
the  days  when  I  went  to  college.  I  cannot  while  I  live 
cease  to  be  grateful,  not  that  I  fell  into  the  hands  of 
some  one  specially  designated  to  do  it,  not  that  I  fell  into 
the  hands  of  an  Association  secretary  who  had  in  his 
hands  the  whole  working  of  the  Christian  life  of  the  in- 
stitution, but  that  in  those  old  days  at  Ohio  Wesleyan  I 
fell  into  the  hands  of  a  faculty,  which  faculty  felt  itself 
under  a  divine  compulsion  to  do  what  it  could  do  to  in- 
duce young  fellows  like  me,  who  had  come  to  college 
without  having  given  themselves  to  Jesus  Christ,  to  give 
themselves  to  Jesus  Christ." 

In  the  fifth  place,  we  have  to  devise  far  more  efficient 


184     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

following-up  methods  than  we  have  as  yet  put  into  opera- 
tion. Dr.  Denyes  in  Penang — and  he  knows  as  much 
about  this  subject  as  any  man — told  me  that  in  the  area 
of  the  Malaysia  missionary  educational  institutions  they 
had  sent  out  twenty  thousand  students.  They  can  trace 
five  hundred  of  them.  Nineteen  thousand  five  hundred 
have  gone  through  their  institutions  and  been  lost  to  view. 
Now,  it  is  not  all  loss,  of  course.  No  word  is  to  come 
back  to  God  in  vain,  and  every  deed  that  has  been  thor- 
oughly done  makes  its  mark  in  the  working  out  of  God's 
purpose.  But  Dr.  Denyes  held  that  it  is  not  good  mis- 
sionary statesmanship,  this  having  twenty  thousand 
students  under  our  influence  and  then  letting  nineteen 
thousand  five  hundred  go  adrift  without  any  following 
up  and  keeping  in  touch  with  them.  We  found  in  the 
Silliman  Institute  that,  out  of  five  thousand,  only  fifty 
had  been  graduated  from  the  whole  course.  One  per 
cent,  had  been  graduated  from  the  institution.  They 
knew  all  of  these.  That  one  per  cent,  was  followed. 
But  of  the  ninety-nine  per  cent.,  only  a  few  had  been 
followed  up  and  kept  in  touch  with  through  their  various 
agencies.  Well,  we  can  go  on  building  up  more  and 
more  of  these  factories,  but  we  are  not  using  the  product 
of  the  factories  that  we  now  have,  but  are  rather  letting 
most  of  it  get  away  from  us.  One  of  the  greatest  needs 
of  our  educational  s)^stem  is  to  devise  a  more  exacting 
and  more  careful  and  conscientious  plan  for  following  up 
those  who  go  out  from  our  schools. 

And  the  sixth  thing  is — and  I  think  this  point  ties  all 
together — we  cannot  evangelize  by  anything  that  is  un- 
veracious,  anything  that  is  slipshod  or  inaccurate  or  un- 
true. This  is  putting  it  strongly  because  there  is,  of 
course,  a  great  deal  of  sincere  carelessness  and  slip- 
shodness  that   doubtless   does   do   good.     I   suppose   it 


MISSIONARY  EDUCATION  AND  EVANGELISM  185 

would  be  amazing  to  see  with  what  strange  instruments 
God  is  working  and  achieving  results.  But  in  general,  if 
we  want  our  evangelistic  work  to  be  truly  evangelistic,  it 
has  to  be  ever  truer,  more  genuine,  more  accurate,  more 
painstaking,  than  it  has  been.  And  no  education  is  going 
to  be  evangelistic  that  is  not  marked  by  these  qualities. 
If  it  is  not  honest  education,  it  cannot  honestly  preach 
Christ  to  men.  He  can  only  be  represented  to  men  in 
truth  and  in  sincerity.  And  if  we  can  truly  shape  our 
education  so  that  it  will  be  what  it  ought  to  be  as  educa- 
tion, it  will  be  what  we  want  it  to  be  as  evangelism. 


IX 

THE  PURPOSE  AND  PROBLEMS  OF  MEDICAL 
MISSIONARY  WORK 

IF  there  is  one  form  of  human  activity  which,  it  would 
seem,  might  be  excused  from  the  requirement  of  pro- 
ducing its  fundamental  objectives  to  be  cold-blood- 
edly analyzed  and  questioned  it  would  appear  to  be  med- 
ical missions.  Medical  missionary  activity  is  pure,  loving 
kindness,  unselfish  human  service,  and  these  things  are 
their  own  justification.  They  do  not  have  to  specify 
some  ulterior  end  which  they  are  serving,  before  they  can 
be  regarded  as  legitimate.  It  would  be  very  pleasant,  if 
we  might  think  of  medical  missions  just  in  this  way 
without  needing  to  be  hedged  around  with  limitations 
such  as  we  are  familiar  with  in  every  other  department 
of  the  missionary  undertaking. 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  medical  missions  do  not  con- 
duct themselves.  They  are  conducted  by  missionary  or- 
ganizations, and  missionary  organizations  are  limited  in 
their  resources,  and  they  exist  to  accomplish  very  clear 
and  definite  ends.  Medical  missions  must  be  adjusted  to 
the  problem  of  proportion  and  to  the  accomplishment  of 
these  clear  ends.  Furthermore,  nothing  really  functions 
just  in  a  free  way  of  itself.  In  all  life  there  is  articula- 
tion ;  energy  works  in  and  through  correlations  and  frame- 
works. This  is  true  of  the  medical  missionary  under- 
taking. 

For  its  own  sake,  for  the  sake  of  the  definiteness  of  its 
work  and  for  the  sake  of  its  excellence  and  efficiency 

i86 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  187 

medical  missionary  work  must  ask  itself,  whether  any- 
body else  is  entitled  to  ask  a  question  or  not,  what  it  is 
for,  what  it  is  seeking  to  do  and  just  what  the  relation- 
ships are  in  which  it  stands;  and  if  we  are  responsible 
for  missionary  administration  which  would  define  these 
fundamental  objectives  and  are  to  consider  the  problems 
which  medical  missions  raise  in  connection  with  our  whole 
responsibility,  it  goes  without  saying  that  our  first  under- 
taking must  be  to  get  before  ourselves  clearly  and  com- 
prehensively what  the  legitimate  objectives  of  medical 
missions  may  be  said  to  be. 

The  best  statement  I  have  ever  seen  on  the  subject  is 
Dr.  Christie's  paper  at  the  last  Shanghai  Conference. 
Dr.  Christie  is  one  of  the  most  experienced  medical  mis- 
sionaries and  teachers  of  medicine  in  China,  and  this  is 
the  paper  in  which  the  commission  of  which  he  was  the 
convener  set  forth  the  results  of  its  correspondence  and 
studies  during  the  preceding  five  or  six  years.  And  yet 
hardly  anywhere  in  that  paper  is  there  any  mention  made 
of  one  objective  of  medical  missions  which  undoubtedly 
was  historically  one  of  the  first  to  be  discerned,  and  that  is 
the  care  of  the  health  of  the  missionaries.  We  all  recog- 
nize distinctly  enough  that  that  is  one  of  the  functions  of 
medical  missions.  In  one  sense  it  is  a  diminishing  func- 
tion. We  have  a  great  many  missions  where  there  are 
no  medical  missionaries  at  all,  where  the  medical  care  of 
our  missionaries  is  provided  for  in  other  ways — by  for- 
eign civilian  doctors  or  by  doctors  on  the  field  belonging 
to  the  nationality,  who  have  had  their  training  in  satis- 
factory medical  schools  which  exist  there — where  never- 
theless we  feel  obliged  to  carry  on  the  rest  of  our  mis- 
sionary undertaking.  I  suppose  in  one  view  we  may  re- 
gard this  function  as  likely  to  be  a  steadily  diminishing 
one;  and  in  another  view  it  ought  to  be  an  increasing 


188      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

objective.  In  the  proper  planning  of  missionary  build- 
ings, in  the  drainage,  the  supply  of  water,  and  the  sanita- 
tion of  missionary  compounds,  in  the  conservation  of  the 
health  and  efficiency  of  the  missionary  community — in 
these  regards,  the  medical  missionaries  in  many  of  our 
fields  ought  to  take  a  larger  measure  of  responsibility  than 
they  have  taken  for  the  last  twenty  years.  If  we  go  back 
thirty  years,  I  think  we  will  find  that  medical  missionaries 
did  then  largely  carry  these  responsibilities.  But  there 
was  a  shift  in  their  relationships  which  in  many  fields 
relieved  the  medical  missionaries  from  the  discharge  of 
some  of  these  functions.  Medical  missionaries  should 
think  of  themselves  as  carrying  this  responsibility  and  a 
sentiment  should  be  created  and  fostered  in  each  mis- 
sionary community  v/hich  would  recognize  this. 

The  second  objective,  which  in  one  sense  would  seem 
to  cover  the  whole  ground,  is  to  do  good,  but  a  moment's 
reflection  shows  that  it  is  not  a  satisfactory  or  a  vei-y 
serviceable  definition.  Oftentimes  the  greatest  good  is 
done  by  refusing  to  do  good.  There  are  men  in  the 
Rockefeller  Institute,  for  instance,  who  are  not  doing  all 
the  general  good  which  they  could  do.  They  do  not  for- 
sake their  tasks  to  render  help  to  sick  people  about  them 
in  the  city.  They  have  deliberately  confined  themselves 
to  specialized  tasks  which  they  have  vigorously  set  for 
themselves.  They  know  that  in  the  end  they  will  do  a 
great  deal  more  good  in  this  way.  Our  Lord  might  have 
spent  all  His  time  working  miracles.  He  could  have 
gone  about  the  world  a  lord  bountiful,  throwing  good 
about  on  every  side  and  He  would  have  died  and  been 
forgotten.  He  realized  He  would  do  more  good  by  re- 
fraining from  doing  good.  And  He  spent  His  life  plant- 
ing great  principles  in  humanity  which  have  ever  since 
been  fountains  of  beneficence  and  which  are  immortal. 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  189 

A  third  way  of  defining  the  objective  of  medical  mis- 
sions would  be  to  say  that  they  are  to  relieve  suffering. 
In  China,  however,  various  agencies  are  going  to  estab- 
lish great  medical  educational  institutions  that  will  not 
relieve  suffering  at  all  except  incidentally.  In  the  end 
the  work  they  are  doing  will  vastly  increase  the  amount 
of  service  rendered  to  the  world  in  the  diminution  of 
suffering,  but  they  themselves  will  not  be  reducing  suf- 
fering greatly  by  their  definite  activity. 

In  the  fourth  place,  it  is  among  the  objectives  of 
medical  missions  to  relieve  prejudice  and  secure  access 
to  the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  people.  One  often  hears 
this  use  of  medical  service  alluded  to  in  terms  of  contempt 
or  disrespect,  as  though  these  considerations  which  I 
spoke  of  in  the  beginning  ought  to  be  the  only  ones — doing 
good  and  showing  loving  kindness,  but  I  do  not  think 
this  aspect  of  medical  missions  should  be  spoken  of  with 
disrespect.  That  is  a  great  service  which  enlarges  a 
man's  mind,  which  makes  his  spirit  more  hospitable. 
Medical  missions  do  not  only  open  the  minds  of  men  to  a 
practical  statement  of  religious  truth,  they  do  not  only 
make  friends  for  the  evangelistic  missionary ;  they  enlarge 
all  the  horizons  of  the  life  they  touch.  They  make  these 
men  accessible  to  all  kinds  of  new  ideas;  they  enlarge 
the  hospitality  of  the  human  spirit ;  and  it  is  a  legitimate 
and  by  no  means  to  be  understimated  objective  of  medical 
missions  that  they  do  thus  remove  prejudice  and  open 
doors  of  access  to  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men. 

The  fifth  element  in  the  objective  of  medical  missions 
is  the  introduction  of  sanitation  and  hygiene,  and  other 
true  ideas.  The  whole  of  truth  hangs  together  and  we 
do  not  let  any  part  of  it  into  men's  minds  without  making 
an  easier  roadway  for  the  rest  to  come  in.  Any  medical 
missionary  who  teaches  a  truer  conception  of  the  body 


190     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

teaches  a  truer  conception  of  a  good  many  other  things 
besides  the  body,  and  it  is  a  legitimate  and  proper  object- 
ive of  medical  missions  that,  while  it  does  these  things 
specifically  in  the  interests  of  evangelistic  responsibility, 
it  does  them  also  in  regard  to  the  whole  life  of  man  and 
the  whole  interest  of  man  in  the  world. 

And  the  sixth  objective  is  the  development  of  the 
medical  and  nursing  professions,  or  the  moralizing  of  the 
influences  that  may  exist  for  the  production  of  such 
professions.  In  some  fields  both  must  be  done,  for  ex- 
ample, where  there  is  no  opportunity  for  any  kind  of 
training  except  that  which  missionaries  provide.  But  no 
matter  what  our  will  may  be  to  build  medical  schools  and 
keep  them  always  under  control  it  cannot  be  done.  If 
we  had  sought  twenty-five  or  thirty  years  ago  to  build 
medical  schools  in  Japan  we  would  have  been  displaced 
long  before  this.  In  some  other  lands,  hitherto,  we  have 
been  required  through  the  medical  missionaries  to  pro- 
duce the  doctors  needed  in  that  country.  Sooner  or  later 
the  governments  enter  the  field  and  build  their  own 
medical  schools.  But  even  then,  if  there  are  to  be  the 
proper  moral  ideals  and  the  proper  spiritual  motives,  we 
must  be  in  a  position  to  help  to  influence  the  profession. 
China  is  a  nation  of  materialists.  You  cannot  count 
upon  the  altruism  and  friendly  service  in  China  that  you 
can  count  upon  in  Christian  lands.  Dr.  Welch  regards 
it  as  fundamentally  necessary  to  put  religion  and  the 
influences  of  the  Christian  religion  into  medical  training 
in  China.  I  was  interested  some  time  ago  in  reading  an 
old  address,  I  think  by  Baron  Ogawa,  in  regard  to  the 
moral  training  of  nurses  in  Japan,  in  which  he  referred 
to  the  moral  pervasion  of  the  profession  by  Christian 
spirit  in  this  Western  land  and  the  lack  of  anything  equal 
to  this  in  Japan,  and  he  urged  the  necessity  of  securing 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  191 

some  such  moral  contribution  to  the  nursing  profession 
in  Japan.  It  is  an  appalling  thing  to  think  of  what  the 
profession  of  nursing  might  become  in  Asia,  if  we  failed 
to  steep  it  in  all  the  moral  sanctions  that  spring  from 
Christianity.  It  is  one  of  the  first  functions  of  the  far- 
seeing  medical  missionary  to  moralize  and  spiritualize  the 
professions  of  the  doctor  and  the  nurse  in  these  non- 
Christian  lands. 

In  the  seventh  element  of  our  objective  we  come  nearer' 
its  center — the  expression  by  incarnation  of  the  spirit  and 
the  teaching  of  Christianity.  By  no  means  is  all  knowl- 
edge communicated  by  language.  Perhaps  we  do  not 
know  what  an  incomplete  thing  either  language  or  knowl- 
edge really  is.  Knowledge  and  deeds— how  much  does 
the  language  add  and  how  much  is  added  to  the  language 
by  the  act  and  what  goes  into  the  act  ?  We  do  not  know 
yet.  Language,  its  meaning,  origin  and  growth  is  largely 
a  mystery  to  us,  but  we  do  know  that  the  greatest  revela- 
tion that  ever  was  given  of  the  word  of  God  was  not  in 
a  book,  was  not  a  written  statement,  was  not  an  oral 
statement  nor  was  it  a  deed,  nor  was  it  a  series  of  deeds. 
It  was  a  life  operating  in  deeds  and  expressing  itself  in 
words,  requiring  all  of  these.  We  may  be  perfectly  sure 
the  missionary  enterprise  has  got  to  express  itself  to  the 
non-Christian  world  in  very  many  other  than  verbal 
ways  or  it  will  never  carry  our  message  to  the  non- 
Christian  world  at  all.  It  must  be  carried  by  the  whole 
range  of  loving  acts  and  deeds,  in  every  way  in  which 
truth  is  made  effective.  What  would  we  know  about 
friendship,  if  we  had  learned  it  simply  from  the  word 
friendship?  The  friendship  which  we  really  know  is  the 
friendship  we  have  learned  from  friendship  itself. 
Tenderness  and  love  do  not  gain  their  meaning  from  the 
words  which  express  them,  but  the  words  arise  from  the 


192      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

things  themselves.  Precisely  so,  it  is  an  indispensable 
purpose  of  medical  missions  that  they  give  expression  just 
as  truly  and  effectually  to  the  Christian  Gospel  as  the 
Christian  evangelist  and  teacher. 

Finally  there  is  this  fundamental  objective  which  is  the 
same  in  all  our  missionary  work,  and  that  is  to  lodge 
Christ — and  I  use  the  word  in  the  largest  and  most 
mystical  and  most  personal  sense — to  lodge  Christ,  the  liv- 
ing, loving  Christ,  to  get  the  mind  and  thought  of  Christ 
lodged  in  human  life  the  world  around.  That  is  what 
our  missionary  enterprise  exists  for,  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  every  agency  we  use  exists  for  that  same  purpose. 

Now  a  second  problem  is  the  problem  of  the  method 
in  which  this  objective  is  going  to  be  brought  forward, 
this  purpose  to  be  wrought  out.  There  are  three  main 
agencies  operating  on  the  fields  of  missions — the  medical 
school  for  training  native  leaders,  the  medical  hospital 
with  its  affiliated  dispensaries  and  the  work  of  the 
medical  itinerant.  The  problem  of  the  first  of  these  is 
already  changing  in  China.  We  had  hardly  begun  there, 
when  new  elements  came  into  the  field,  changing  the  whole 
program  as  first  laid  out.  We  may  be  sure  this  will  be 
more  or  less  true  in  every  field,  where  we  have  this  work. 
Some  element  of  change  will  be  introduced  which  will 
modify  our  whole  program.  We  must  make  our  methods 
as  pliable  as  possible  to  fit  the  new  conditions  as  they 
arise. 

The  second  important  agency  through  which  these  ob- 
jectives are  being  realized  is  hospitals  and  dispensaries. 
It  is  needless  here  to  discuss  this  phase  of  work. 

About  the  third  agency,  however,  I  would  like  to  say  a 
word.  It  is  an  aspect  of  the  medical  work  calling  for 
some  explanation.  Many  medical  missionaries  are  now 
unwilling  to  go  into  itineration,  because  they  believe  that 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  193 

it  means  a  depreciation  of  their  professional  efficiency, 
that  there  are  certain  kinds  of  medical  work  which  they 
cannot  do  as  effectively  in  itinerating  through  country 
villages  as  in  modern  hospitals  of  the  kind  which  they 
believe  should  be  provided.  There  is  truth  in  this,  but 
there  seems  to  me  to  be  room  on  the  foreign  field  for 
medical  missionaries  who  will  do  this  itinerating  medical 
work.  It  is  this  work  that  brings  a  man  into  close  touch 
with  the  people.  We  can  recall  the  service  that  has 
been  rendered,  in  the  past,  by  such  work  and  see  how  it 
has  found  its  mysterious  way  right  into  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  men  and  communities  and  we  know  the  need. 
Let  me  read  a  few  extracts  from  a  letter  from  a  medical 
missionary:  "I've  come  out  to  help  poor  people  who 
have  no  one  to  help  them,  and  I  find  I  have  to  compete 
for  the  opportunity,  not  that  I  dislike  competition,  be- 
cause I  enjoy  it.    Last  year  our  receipts  in hospital 

were ,  as  Dr. told  me,  more  than  he  took 

in  himself.  I  don't  know,  but  it  worries  me.  When  I 
spend  from  7 :  30  a.  m.  to  2  p.  m.  on  private  patients,  and 
have  to,  in  order  to  keep  the  hospital  running  and  supplied 
with  all  that  is  needed;  when  at  the  same  time  I  know 
thousands  are  suffering  somewhere  from  lack  of  a  physi- 
cian and  surgeon ;  when  I  know  in there  are  at 

least  six  or  eight  men  who  can  operate  and  who  are 
competing  with  me ;  I  wonder  what  my  duty  is.  As  you 
have  said,  I  have  one  life  to  live,  and  I  want  to  put  it 
where  it  will  count  for  most.  I  come  out  here  and  find 
I'm  a  money-making  machine  to  keep  a  hospital  open, 
have  to  fight  for  position  much  as  a  city  surgeon  at  home, 
have  to  make  a  certain  amount  of  money  in  order  to  keep 
the  hospital  at  the  front,  and  this  prevents  one  from 
touring  more  generally  and  reaching  more  generally  the 
poor  people  for  whom  we  have  especially  come. 


194     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOBLD 

"  I  suppose  you  think  I'm  horribly  radical,  but  you  must 
see  my  point.     .     .     . 

"If  all  goes  well  here  and  we  have  the  patients  I 
rather  expect  and  the  work  we  have  every  reason  to  ex- 
pect, I  will  be  able  to  write  to  you  more  explicitly.  All  I 
want  is  to  find  a  place  I  can  be  busy  in  day  in  and  day 
out,  serving  people  who  need  help,  who  but  for  me  would 
go  unhelped.  I  don't  mean  to  be  selfish  and  want  all  the 
credit  of  helping  people,  but  I  feel  with  our  limited 
supply  of  medical  men  and  institutions  we  ought  to  go 
where  we  can  reach  the  most  people  otherwise  unreached. 
It  is  a  question  in  my  mind  whether  we  ought  to  settle 
in  a  big  city  and  be  forced  into  competition  to  make 
money  enough  to  keep  a  hospital  open.  Because  we  rep- 
resent the  cause  we  do  we  must  so  far  as  possible  be 
ahead  of  every  one,  and  in  this  way  we  are  likely  to  for- 
get that  service  is  our  motto  and  the  giving  of  the  Gospel 
message  our  real  purpose.     .     .     . 

"  I  wouldn't  change  this  work  for  any  job  on  earth.  If 
men  at  home  only  knew  its  joys  you  would  be  overrun 
with  applications.  I  am  only  anxious  for  more  work  for 
unfortunate  people.  The  city  is  fine,  but  I  spend  too 
much  time  on  patients  who  are  well  able  to  go  to  a  dozen 
other  doctors.  I  have  enough  to  do  there  but  am  anxious 
for  more.     .     .     ." 

It  does  seem  to  me  that  in  our  missionary  administra- 
tion we  are  in  danger  of  slipping  too  much  into  the 
institutionalization  of  our  medical  work  in  schools  and 
hospitals  on  the  foreign  field.  We  need  the  continuance 
of  the  itinerating  medical  work  for  a  long  time  yet. 
Some  time  it  goes  as  deep  down  into  the  ranges  of  life 
as  any  other  form  of  missionary  work  we  can  do. 

The  third  set  of  problems  are  those  of  proportion  and 
limitation.     We  could  absorb  all  our  missionary  money 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  195 

in  the  medical  work  alone.  The  China  Medical  Board 
will  be  spending  five  or  ten  million  dollars  in  China  in 
its  two  medical  hospitals  and  schools.  We  could  take 
every  dollar  missionary  agencies  are  using  the  world  over 
and  put  it  all  into  one  province  of  China,  and  not  then 
be  adequately  dealing  with  the  suffering  in  that  province. 
The  question  is  that  of  making  our  whole  work  efficient 
and  proportional  and  of  accomplishing  the  whole  of  our 
great  end.  This  simply  means  that  medical  missions  must 
be  judged,  not  in  any  theoretical  way,  nor  yet  in  any 
abstract  way,  but  on  the  basis  of  reality  provided  by 
facts.  I  notice  that  the  medical  missionaries  at  the  Edin- 
burgh and  Shanghai  Conferences  spoke  of  medical  mis- 
sions as  an  integrally  essential  and  indispensable  part  of 
the  foreign  missionary  enterprise.  There  is  a  sense  in 
which  this  is  true,  but  in  another  sense  it  is  not  true.  In 
Latin  America  we  have  foreign  missions  without  any 
medical  missionary  work.  We  are  carrying  on  foreign 
mission  work  in  Japan  and  yet  we  have  only  one  or  two 
medical  missions  now  in  that  country,  and  we  are  likely, 
so  far  as  I  see,  to  carry  on  much  of  our  work  in  the 
future  without  any  medical  missions  at  all.  We  must 
plan  for  just  as  much  medical  work  as  will  yield  the 
maximum  of  result  in  its  correlation  with  the  rest  of  our 
work  but  will  not  absorb  from  the  limited  whole  at  our 
disposal  more  than  can  wisely  be  set  aside  for  this  one 
department. 

Secondly,  whatever  we  do  must  be  done  truly.  It  must 
be  done  well  and  truly,  because  we  are  Christian  workers, 
and  anything  that  is  done  badly  and  falsely  belies  our 
principles.  We  cannot  preach  the  Gospel  of  truth  by 
activities  that  have  either  falsity  or  unworth  in  them. 
In  many  fields,  moreover,  we  are  not  going  to  have  any 
opportunity  except  by  reason  of  the  quality  of  what  we 


196     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

do.  In  Siam  and  Korea  our  quantitative  medical  mis- 
sionary activity  will  diminish.  In  Korea  the  Japanese 
Government  is  establishing  large  hospitals  each  with  ten 
or  twelve  specially  trained  men.  It  is  now  a  question  of 
how  long  the  Japanese  will  give  permits  to  any  hospitals 
that  are  inadequately  staffed  and  equipped,  that  attempt 
to  meet  the  need  of  the  community  in  which  they  are 
located  and  then  close  up  for  a  year  or  more  now  and 
then.  In  Siam  the  Government  has  built  an  excellent 
hospital  at  Bangkok.  Soon  our  missionaries  will  have 
no  field  except  the  field  which  they  hold  by  virtue  of  the 
quality  of  their  work,  not  only  its  professional  quality, 
but  its  spirit  of  truth  and  sympathy  and  kindness  and 
unselfishness,  the  spirit  which  disregards  caste  lines  and 
social  lines,  the  spirit  that  cannot  be  bought  by  wealth 
and  is  never  forgetful  of  the  poor.  Only  by  the  spirit 
and  the  quality  of  the  work  we  do  are  we  going  to  have 
any  opportunity  at  all  to  carry  on  medical  missions  in 
some  fields  of  Asia  in  the  near  future.  Consequently 
it  seems  to  me  we  shall  have  to  limit  proportionately 
our  hospital  work  instead  of  indefinitely  extend  it,  in 
order  to  make  the  quality  and  effectiveness  of  the  work 
what  it  must  be,  if  we  are  to  continue  the  service  of 
medical  missions.  We  may  greatly  increase  our  itiner- 
ating medical  service.  No  such  near  limits  appear  to  it. 
In  the  third  place,  I  would  emphasize  our  responsibility 
for  the  trusteeship  of  missionary  funds  with  regard  to 
the  necessity  of  our  holding  fast  to  our  conviction  that 
medical  missions  are  an  integral  part  of  our  whole  mis- 
sionary undertaking,  and  that  we  cannot  send  out  to 
teach  In  schools  or  to  direct  hospitals  or  to  do  medical 
work  the  man  of  a  different  type  of  motive,  the  man  of 
a  different  principle  of  love,  the  man  with  a  different 
thought  about  God  and  our  Lord  and  our  relations  to 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  197 

him  than  prevail  in  the  rest  of  the  undertaking.  We 
cannot  spoil  the  essential  character  of  our  enterprise. 
Unless  we  have  men  of  one  heart,  men  of  one  truth  and 
experience,  men  of  one  general  attitude  toward  life, 
within  the  ranges  possible  within  human  personality, 
unless  we  do  this,  there  is  a  grave  danger  of  chilling  the 
spirit  of  any  mission  station.  One  man  may  by  his 
attitude  petrify  and  stultify  all  that  is  best  in  its  in- 
fluence and  life.  The  whole  missionary  community  must 
be  bound  together  in  the  bonds  of  confidence  and  affection 
which  are  quickened  in  a  common  life  in  Christ.  I 
was  interested  in  a  pamphlet  which  I  saw  one  day  on 
medical  missionary  work  entitled :  "  Claims  of  the  Mis- 
sionary Enterprise  on  the  Medical  Profession,"  by  Dr. 
Daniel  J.  Macgowan,  delivered  before  the  Temperance 
Society  of  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  in 
New  York  in  1842.  This  is  one  of  the  last  sentences: 
"  The  medical  missionary  should  have  great  singleness 
of  purpose,  never  allowing  his  secondary  object,  the  heal- 
ing of  disease,  and  the  promotion  of  science,  to  become 
his  primary  one;  this  honour  should  in  his  mind  belong 
only  to  the  conversion  of  souls,  else  in  the  end  he  will 
prove  a  stumbling  block  to  the  heathen  and  a  scandal  to 
the  Church." 

Now  there  is  an  unnecessary  alternative  here.  The 
writer  speaks  of  a  first  and  a  second,  regarding  things 
that  may  and  should  go  side  by  side.  That  is  a  difficulty 
of  all  our  space  and  time  necessities  of  speech.  But  it  is 
only  first  and  second  in  verbal  order.  All  must  go  to- 
gether. They  are  contemporaneous  in  life.  I  would 
not  make  a  distinction  between  an  unselfish  motive  and 
the  evangelical  motive.  Those  are  unrealities,  those  dis- 
tinctions. If  the  motive  is  not  unselfish,  it  is  not  evan- 
gelical.    In  Christianity  all  such  motives  ought  to  run 


198     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

right  together  in  one  melted  unity  in  which  there  is  no 
cleavage  at  all.  We  ought  to  be  sure  that  our  mission 
stations  are  founded  on  that  condition  and  that  all  the 
men  who  are  going  out  to  do  medical  work  are  as  alive 
to  it  as  the  men  going  out  to  do  evangelistic  work.  How 
is  the  medical  man  going  to  do  human  work  for  the 
man  who  comes  to  see  him  in  the  hospital,  if  he  does 
not  have  the  same  feeling  as  the  evangelistic  man?  A 
medical  missionary  in  China  told  me  once  of  an  old 
farmer  who  brought  in  his  little  boy,  his  only  child,  to 
be  examined.  The  doctor  took  the  boy,  looked  him 
over  very  carefully  and  then  said  to  the  old  farmer, 
"  Well,  I  do  not  believe  we  can  save  him  for  you,  but 
the  only  thing  we  can  do  is  to  operate,  and  if  you  are 
willing,  we  will  do  the  best  we  can."  The  old  man 
said  that  he  had  brought  his  boy  there  for  that  pur- 
pose ;  that  he  had  confidence  in  them.  They  operated  and 
that  evening  the  old  man  came  to  see  the  doctor  and 
said,  "  Do  you  think  he  is  going  to  get  well  ?  "  "I  am 
afraid  he  may  not,"  said  the  doctor,  "  I  am  sorry." 
"  Well,"  said  the  old  man,  "  have  you  done  all  you  can 
for  him  ?  "  "  Yes,"  said  the  doctor,  "  we  have."  But  the 
old  man  continued :  "  Is  there  anything  anybody  can  do  ?  " 
and  the  doctor  said :  "  Yes,  we  can  pray."  "  What  is 
that  ?  "  said  the  farmer.  He  had  never  heard  of  prayer 
before.  The  doctor  explained  what  prayer  was.  "  How 
do  you  do  it  ?  "  said  the  farmer.  "  Come  in,"  said  the 
doctor,  "  and  I  will  show  you."  They  went  in  and  he 
showed  him.  All  through  that  night  the  old  farmer  knelt 
in  the  ward  by  the  cot  of  his  boy  and  prayed  that  his  life 
might  be  spared,  and  the  life  of  his  little  son  was  spared. 
Do  you  mean  to  say  that  doctor  could  have  done  a  man's 
part,  a  brother's  part,  by  that  farmer,  if  he  had  not  been 
able  to  enter  into  the  whole  life  of  the  man?    Suppose 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  199 

he  had  had  to  say,  "  Well,  we  have  an  ordained  missionary 
in  this  station,  I  will  get  him  and  maybe  he  can  tell  you 
something  I  have  not  told  you."  Why,  the  flush  and  joy 
and  reality  of  the  deep  and  appealing  truth  would  have 
been  lost.  It  was  because  the  doctor,  who  was  seeking 
to  save  his  little  son,  could  let  him  into  this  secret  that 
the  old  man  was  able  to  go  into  that  hospital  as  he  did 
and  then  go  out  with  something  more  than  his  son — 
with  a  whole  new  thought  of  life.  His  little  son  was 
given  back  to  him,  and  something  else  that  he  could 
keep  as  long  as  he  could  keep  his  son  and  forever. 

There  are  other  great  reasons  why  we  must  keep  our 
medical  work  and  our  evangelistic  work  locked  together 
indissolubly.  Each  disease  on  the  field  is  linked  with 
the  superstitions  of  the  people,  and  the  medical  man 
who  would  deal  with  one  must  deal  also  with  the  other. 
In  northern  Siam  malignant  malaria  was  sweeping  peo- 
ple away  by  hundreds.  It  was  not  enough  to  prescribe 
quinine  for  them.  The  moment  the  missionary's  back 
was  turned  the  devils  came.  They  feared  these  devils  and 
forsook  the  medicine.  The  missionaries  went  out  and 
stood  with  the  people  and  fought  their  devils  with  them. 
It  was  a  real  fight.  That  is  only  an  illustration  of  the 
mind  of  the  whole  Animistic  world,  in  Africa  and  in 
Asia.  Disease  and  false  thoughts  about  life  and  false 
attitudes  toward  the  unseen  are  all  bound  up  together, 
so  that  a  man  cannot  deal  as  a  doctor  with  what  he 
would  think  in  this  country  is  distinctly  his  field  of  duty, 
unless  he  is  prepared  to  deal  also  with  these  other  things. 

In  the  fourth  place,  from  the  point  of  view  of  mission- 
ary administration,  we  do  not  wish  to  have  the  planning, 
the  projecting  or  the  conduct  of  medical  missions  di- 
vorced, either  at  home  or  abroad,  from  the  whole  ad- 
ministration of  the  undertaking.     It  breaks  up  the  har- 


200     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

mony  of  the  mission  stations  and  the  unity  of  the  mis- 
sion councils.  It  sets  off  a  certain  element  in  a  station 
from  the  rest  of  the  station,  so  that  it  cannot  be  called 
upon  in  those  times  of  emergency,  when  the  whole  energy 
of  the  body  of  workers  must  be  fluent  in  order  to  be  suc- 
cessfully used.  Such  a  segregation  is  fatal  to  real  unity 
or  efficiency.  Here  at  home  we  need  to  get  the  whole 
work  and  life  of  the  church  tied  together  in  some  way: 
far  more  is  this  needed  on  the  mission  field. 

There  is  this  additional  reason  for  unity.  The  prob- 
lem of  sanitation  and  hygiene  is  not  merely  a  medical 
problem  in  the  foreign  fields.  It  is  an  economic  problem. 
Take  Chinese  villages.  What  is  the  use  of  talking  mod- 
ern notions  of  hygiene  to  men  and  women,  when  the 
whole  family  has  not  enough  to  eat,  where  it  cannot 
live  in  a  clean  house,  where  the  people  cannot  buy 
clean  clothes,  where  they  must  live  on  a  few  cents  a 
day;  it  is  an  economic  problem  quite  as  much  as  a 
problem  of  medicine.  It  was  that  in  the  Panama  Canal 
Zone.  Think  of  the  scientific  aspect  of  that  thorough 
sanitation — hardly  a  mosquito,  hardly  a  fly.  I  saw  a  few 
at  the  horse  stables  in  the  Zone  and  only  there.  Panama 
was  cleaned  up,  but  it  took  money  to  do  it.  So  it  will 
be  all  over  the  world.  Human  life  is  not  divisible.  It  is 
all  knit  together.  We  must  deal  with  it  as  a  whole.  We 
cannot  set  off  one  fragment  without  weakening  that  frag- 
ment and  diminishing  its  influence.  Of  course,  one  part 
will  say,  "  Such  a  course  keeps  us  back.  We  can  do 
much  better,  if  we  do  it  all  by  ourselves."  If  the  evan- 
gelistic work  had  said  that,  the  medical  missionaries 
would  have  had  little  opportunity. 

In  the  end,  while  it  is  true  we  might  segregate  some 
section  of  our  missionary  undertaking  and  by  centering 
on  that  give  it  an  excessive  development  above  what  it 


PUEPOSE  OF  MEDICAL  MISSIONAEY  WOEK  201 

has  already  gained,  I  still  believe  that  the  ultimate  loss 
would  be  incalculable,  and  that  we  will  do  better  by  hold- 
ing our  whole  propaganda  together  and  letting  it  strike  as 
a  unit  upon  the  life  of  the  world  and  carry  as  a  unit  its 
message  toward  the  end  of  making  the  life  and  the 
thought  and  the  energies  of  Christ  effective  in  humanity. 
Lastly,  we  must  shape  our  work  to  many  impending 
changes.  Where  we  have  medical  missions  now,  we  may 
not  be  able  to  have  them  in  the  same  form  for  many  more 
years.  Where  we  shall  be  able  to  have  them,  they  will 
have  to  change  very  materially  in  many  ways,  and  I  am 
even  prepared  to  believe  that  there  are  places  where  we 
do  not  have  them  now  and  where  we  have  thought — in 
the  fashion  of  our  thinking  hitherto — that  we  should  not 
need  them,  where  we  may  have  to  bring  them  in — maybe 
in  South  America,  maybe  in  some  other  places,  maybe  for 
some  other  purposes,  for  example  with  a  view  to  striking 
in  a  new  and  more  general  way  at  the  social  needs  of 
many  of  these  lands,  perhaps  getting  access  there  to 
classes  we  are  not  now  reaching.  I  know  there  are  many 
who  think  we  ought  to  hold  fast  to  the  old  plan  of  purely 
verbal  and  individualistic  preaching,  but  we  are  not  hold- 
ing fast  to  it  at  home.  If  we  go  through  the  churches  to- 
day we  will  find  that  the  masses  there  have  not  been 
brought  in  by  any  defined  evangelistic  method  of  delib- 
erate conviction  of  individuals;  they  have  been  brought 
in  through  the  family,  the  school,  or  through  the  caste 
as  in  India.  The  methods  of  the  Kingdom  must  be  as 
varied  and  mobile  as  life.  My  only  contention  is  that 
from  the  point  of  view  of  missionary  administration  we 
have  one  end  that  we  are  seeking,  and  we  must  seek  it 
by  unified  effort.  The  end  we  are  seeking  is  a  living 
one.  That  means  that  nothing  is  the  same  two  moments 
in  succession;  that  everything  is  going  to  shift  and  be 


202     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

transformed  with  us,  and  that  we  must  be  prepared,  one 
way  or  the  other,  to  make  adjustments  from  year  to 
year,  not  losing  sight  of  our  end,  please  God,  not  for- 
getting, nor  allowing  to  sink  into  unconscious  assumption 
the  motive  and  the  driving  spirit,  which  are  Christ. 


THE  RELATION  OF  WESTERN  THEOLOGICAL 

STATEMENTS  AND  FORMS  OF  RELIGIOUS 

EXPERIENCE  TO  OTHER  RACES 


WHEN  we  face  this  subject  squarely,  we  have 
presented  to  us,  on  the  one  hand,  a  strong 
case  in  support  of  the  frank  transportation 
to  the  mission  fields  of  our  Western  creeds  and  types  of 
Christian  experience.  The  arguments  may  be  summar- 
ized as  follows: 

1.  We  cannot  help  it.  We  can  only  go  out  as  the  men 
we  are  and  carry  the  convictions  in  which  we  honestly 
believe.  Missionaries  go  from  definite  church  organiza- 
tions, trained  in  the  doctrines  and  life  of  these  bodies. 
Whether  their  denomination  lays  on  them  little  or  much 
of  obligation  to  the  denominational  tradition,  they  still 
are  members  of  that  denomination  and  of  its  missions, 
sharing  in  a  common  body  of  opinion  and  a  common 
temper  of  life,  which  are  not  things  they  can  lay  aside 
by  any  act  of  will,  or  cancel  as  though  they  were  not. 

2.  Our  obligation  is  to  carry  to  the  non-Christian 
world  not  the  original  Christian  message  alone,  but  all 
that  the  Spirit  of  God  has  added  of  clearer  understanding 
and  of  richer  experience  through  the  centuries.  We 
should  be  doing  wrong  to  these  new  native  churches  to 
ask  them  to  start  where  we  started  four  hundred  years, 
or  eighteen  hundred  years  ago.    ^ 

203X 


204     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

3.  To  call  our  theological  statements  "Western"  is 
to  misname  them.  The  whole  purpose  of  those  who 
framed  them  was  to  escape  from  anything  sectional  or 
territorial,  and  to  embody,  in  formal  statement,  the  uni- 
versal elements  of  Christianity.  Truth  itself  is  universal, 
and  if  these  statements  are  true — as  the  churches  which 
hold  them  must  certainly  believe  that  they  are — then  this 
truth  is  not  Western,  but  Eastern  as  well.  That  they  are 
Western  in  language  is  obvious,  but  the  Bible  and  all 
other  good  books  require  translation  likewise. 

4.  If  it  be  said  that  these  creeds  are  Western  in  their 
mode  of  thought  and  forms  of  emphasis,  some  reply  by 
pointing  out  how  much  there  is  in  them  which  came  dis- 
tinctively from  the  East,  and  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  Councils  which  fashioned  some  of  them  were 
distinctively  Oriental  Councils,  while  others  reply  that 
these  elements  which  are  spoken  of  as  Western  embody 
the  very  principles  which  the  East  needs  most,  and  which 
are  indispensable  to  a  universal  conception,  whether  in 
theology,  or  in  philosophy,  or  in  social  institution,  and 
that  to  carry  to  Asia  a  theological  doctrine  or  ideal  of 
life  containing  only  Oriental  principles  and  in  no  wise 
colliding  with  or  supplementing  the  Asiatic  ideals  of 
the  present  day,  would  not  be  such  a  Christian  evangeliza- 
tion as  the  New  Testament  contemplates  or  as  Asia 
mortally  needs.  What  India  wants  is  the  Christian 
antidote  to  her  pantheism — not  a  surrender  of  Christian- 
ity to  a  pantheistic  construction.  What  Mohammedanism 
needs  is  the  Christian  idea  of  God — not  a  surrender  to 
the  theistic  mechanicalism  of  Islam. 

5.  It  is  not  the  Western  forms  either  of  doctrine  or 
of  life  in  which  Christianity  is  presented  that  perplex  and 
hinder  non-Christian  peoples.  It  is  the  very  essence  and 
universal  elements  of  Christianity.     Commission  IV  of 


WESTEEN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEIMENTS    205 

the  Edinburgh  Missionary  Conference  in  1910  included 
in  its  list  of  questions  the  following  enquiry :  "  Did  the 
Western  form  in  which  Christianity  was  presented  to  you 
perplex  you?  What  are  the  distinctively  Western  ele- 
ments, as  you  see  them,  in  the  missionary  message  as  now 
presented? ''  This  question  was  addressed  to  converts  to 
Christianity.  The  Report  of  the  Commission  states  that 
the  question  itself  was  unintelligible  to  many.  The  Rev. 
C.  H.  Basil  Wood  of  Japan  says : 

"  I  submitted  this  question  to  several  of  the  Christian 
schoolmasters  in  my  school— men  of  tried  Christian  char- 
acter. They  all  answered  frankly  that  they  were  unable 
to  write  down,  or  formulate,  any  answers.  They  did  not 
understand  what  was  meant  by  references  to  *  Western 
form,  Western  elements,'  in  the  teaching  of  missionaries 
who  teach  from  and  with  an  open  Bible  in  the  hands  of 
all." 

The  Rev.  T.  Takahashi,  of  Japan,  says: 

"  The  so-called  Western  forms  do  not  present  them- 
selves as  Western  forms.  Whilst  recognizing  that  the 
Bible  contains  much  that  is  similar  in  form  to  what  is 
found  here  in  the  Far  East,  the  fact  that  we  have  three 
religions  with  more  or  less  different  forms  of  expression 
prepares  us  to  expect  and  accept  what  may  be  thought 
peculiar  in  the  Christian  religion." 

The  hindrances  and  difficulties  reported  from  the  vari- 
ous fields  had  to  do  not  at  all  with  the  Western  forms 
in  which  Christianity  was  presented.  Both  the  attractive 
and  the  repellent  elements  were  found  in  the  fundamental 
characteristics  of  Christianity— its  claim  to  absolutism  and 
universality;  its  doctrine  of  God;  its  spiritual  freedom; 
its  ethical  difficulty;  its  relation  to  history;  its  principles 
of  personality  and  redemption.  In  comparison  with  these 
difficulties,  any  trouble  with  Western  forms  is  negligible. 


206     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

6.  It  is  even  held  by  some  that  our  modern  forms  of 
creedal  statement  greatly  simplify  and  interpret  the  Gos- 
pel. In  a  most  suggestive  article  in  the  East  and  West 
for  April,  1913,  on  "  The  Western  Form  of  Christianity," 
the  Rev.  Campbell  N.  Moody  argues  that  modern  Chris- 
tian Missions  have  advanced  far  beyond  the  letter  of 
Scripture;  that  our  creedal  formularies  have  immensely 
clarified  the  truth  of  the  New  Testament,  and  he  quotes 
the  naive  observation  of  a  Chinese  convert  to  him,  to  the 
effect  "  that  the  teaching  of  missionaries  was  much  clearer 
than  that  of  the  New  Testament,  for  the  New  Testament, 
he  said,  gives  no  very  definite  account  of  conversion  or 
of  present  salvation,  and  confuses  the  mind  with  con- 
flicting views  of  faith  and  works."  This  creedal  simpli- 
fication and  articulation,  Biblical  theology,  in  other  words, 
Mr.  Moody  argues  is  not  Western  but  human,  and  there- 
fore universal,  as  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  same  creed 
has  taken  hold  of  a  great  variety  of  peoples— Greeks, 
Romans,  Syrians,  Africans,  Celts,  Germans,  Saxons  and 
Slavs.  He  admits  a  Western  accent,  but  not  a  Western 
form,  and  the  accent  would  be  there  whatever  the  form. 
If  any  form  perplexes  the  Chinese  converts,  he  holds,  it 
is  not  the  Western  form  of  our  theology  but  the  Jewish 
cast  of  the  Gospel  narrative. 

7.  Western  forms  of  infidelity  and  unbelief  are  pour- 
ing over  the  world.  Some  of  them  have  an  unmistakable 
Occidental  character  that  does  not  prevent  their  accept- 
ance in  every  part  of  the  non-Christian  world.  The 
books  and  articulated  systems  of  Western  materialism 
have  been  accepted  all  over  Asia.  Are  they  not  to  be 
met  with  the  systems  of  positive  faith,  which  alone  are 
found  adequate  to  deal  with  them  in  the  West?  It  is 
folly  to  declaim  against  our  positive  religious  doctrines 
as  Occidental  and  unintelligible  to  Asia,  when  our  West- 


WESTEEN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    207 

ern  systems  of  negation  and  unbelief  achieve  a  universal 
currency. 

8.  If  it  be  said  that  it  is  the  precision  and  elaborate- 
ness of  our  theological  statements  which  confuse  the  East 
and  divide  the  churches  there,  it  is  replied  that  it  is  the 
want  of  precision  and  the  parsimony  of  statement  in 
our  creeds  that  is  the  chief  objection.  All  the  non- 
Christian  religions  attempt  a  range,  and  some  of  them  a 
detail  which  are  foreign  to  the  restraint  and  reverence  of 
our  Western  creeds. 

9.  It  is  not  the  Western  character  of  Christianity  but 
its  foreign  character  that  raises  prejudice  against  it,  es- 
pecially where  the  spirit  of  nationalism  exists,  or  has 
grown  up  without  discerning  its  debt  to  Christianity. 
The  real  root  of  prejudice,  so  far  as  it  springs  from  any- 
thing else  than  the  essential  character  of  Christianity,  is 
found  in  the  confusion  of  Christianity  and  its  messengers! 
with  political  invasion  and  the  pressure  of  dominant  races. 

10.  It  is  not  the  forms  of  Christian  doctrine  that  we 
carry  to  the  non-Christian  world  which  divide  the  native 
Christians  or  denationalize  and  Westernize  them.  It  Is 
the  tide  of  ^Qcialinfluence^  which  Is  poured  In  independ- 
ently ornilssions,  and  which  missions  would  check  and 
correct  If  they  could.  It  Is  divergencies  of  church  organ- 
ization, teaching  as  to  polity  and  sacraments,  and  the  In- 
defensible application  to  the  non-Christian  churches  of 
alien  geographical  or  historical  names.  As  Dr.  Cuthbert 
Hall  remarked  in  a  passage  quoted  by  Bishop  Brent  in 
his  introductory  note  to  the  Barrows  Lectures  on  "  Christ 
and  the  Eastern  Soul  " : 

"  Next  to  the  ethical  misrepresentation  of  the  Christian 
religion  by  the  perverse  and  contradictory  lives  of  its 
nominal  adherents,  I  know  of  nothing  more  likely  to 
repel  Orientals  from  the  sympathetic  study  of  this  East- 


208     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

ern  faith  (Christianity)  than  the  overshadowing  prom- 
inence of  ecclesiastical  institutions.  That  these  institu- 
tions are  inseparable  from  the  Occidental  practice  of 
Christianity,  history  appears  to  show.  That  they  have 
their  excellent  uses,  in  their  own  sphere,  it  would  be  but 
questionable  wisdom  to  deny." 

11.  Efforts  to  present  Christianity  in  a  form  separate 
from  and  depreciative  of  our  Western  creeds  have  no- 
where met  with  the  success  that  can  be  shown  in  ordinary 
missions  of  our  Western  churches,  nor  have  efforts  such 
as  these  been  free  from  the  same  difficulties  which  attach 
to  our  other  missionary  efforts.  Those  who  have  gone 
out  with  a  message,  either  purposely  or  unconsciously  dis- 
dainful of  the  actual  history  of  Christian  doctrine,  and 
with  an  effort  to  accommodate  Christianity  to  an  Oriental 
soul,  supposed  to  be  different  in  type  or  consciousness 
from  a  Western  soul,  have  met  with  less  success  than 
those  who  have  gone  with  the  clear  historic  Christian 
message,  and  especially  with  that  message  in  its  challenge 
to  the  actual  social  life  of  men. 

12.  Lastly,  if  our  theological  statements  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  ethnic,  and  other  nations  are  to  correct  their 
Western  bias,  where,  it  may  be  asked,  has  the  correction 
begun  to  be  made  ?  Which  one  of  the  European  nations 
in  the  past  universalized  a  territorial  theology?  Which 
ones  of  the  non-Christian  nations  are  doing  it  to-day  ?  A 
larger  life,  embracing  the  world,  as  Alston  points  out  in 
"  The  White  Man's  Work  in  Asia  and  Africa,"  is  giving 
us  a  clearer  insight  into  ourselves  and  disclosing  new 
meanings  in  the  Christian  truth  which  has  come  down 
to  us ;  but  what  new  truth  or  rearrangement  of  theolog- 
ical emphasis,  or  even  what  new  heresy  has  the  Universal 
Church  received  as  a  result  of  more  than  a  century  of 
missianary  contact  jvith  the  non-Christian  world? 


WESTERN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    209 

II 

This  is  one  side  of  the  case.  What  is  to  be  said  on  the 
Other  side  ? 

1.  First  of  all,  it  is  recognized  that  the  foreign  mis- 
sionary enterprise  represents  the  greatest  unified  effort  of 
the  Christian  Church,  and  that  the  very  fact  that  the 
problems  to  be  met  on  the  mission  field  are  the  elemental 
problems  of  religion,  and  not  the  issues  of  denominational 
diversity,  has  led  to  a  general  emphasis,  on  the  part  of  all 
the  churches,  upon  fundamental  elements  of  common  re- 
ligious conviction.  As  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  accord- 
ingly, there  has  never  been  the  export  of  our  diversified 
creedal  statements.  The  Westminster  Confession,  the 
Augsburg  Confession,  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  and  the 
Canons  of  the  Synod  of  Dort,  for  example,  have  never 
been  translated  into  many  of  the  languages  in  which  the 
missionary  v^ork  is  done,  and  the  same  thing  is  true  of 
the  full  formularies  of  most  of  the  churches.  The  argu- 
ment in  behalf  of  carrying  our  Western  theological  state- 
ments in  full  to  the  missionary  field,  accordingly,  is  an 
argument  in  behalf  of  what  never  has  been  done  and 
never  will  be  done. 

2.  Not  only  have  we  not  carried  our  full  denomina- 
tional standards  to  the  mission  field,  but  in  many  of  these 
fields  we  have  not  even  preserved  what  were  supposed 
to  be  radical  divergencies  in  theological  principle — the 
divergencies,  for  instance,  of  Calvinism  and  Arminian- 
ism.  The  Methodists  have  been  working  ever  since  they 
went  to  China  with  great  success  with  a  Calvinistic  type 
of  theology.  One  of  them  complained  recently  in  a  paper 
published  by  their  press  in  Shanghai : 

"  What  distinctively  Methodist  literature  does  Method- 
ism in  China  need  at  present?    In  answer,  I  would  say 


210     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

one  thing  needed  is  work  on  systematic  theology.  So  far 
as  I  know,  there  is  no  treatise  from  the  Methodist  stand- 
point. What  we  have  is  tinctured  with  a  diluted  Calvin- 
ism, not  rank,  to  be  sure,  but  still  retaining  a  mild  flavour 
of  that  dead  system." 

In  a  later  number  of  the  same  publication,  another  mis- 
sionary writes : 

"  Many  times  have  I  been  pained  to  hear  our  preachers 
present  Calvinism  to  their  congregations,  and,  what  is 
worse,  to  know  that  the  books  taught  in  our  theological 
seminaries  are  tinctured  with  that  dead  system.  Let  the 
Methodists  of  China  look  about  and  at  once  select  a  man 
filled  with  the  spirit  of  God  and  Methodism,  and  set  him 
aside  for  the  work  of  preparing  clean  Methodist  theo- 
logical works." 

I  am  glad  to  say  that  I  think  the  theology  of  most  of 
the  Presbyterian  missions  is  equally  tinctured  by  the  very 
live  system  of  Arminianism.  To  the  extent  that  these 
theological  differences  are  emphasized,  our  Western  theo- 
logical statements  divide  us.  To  the  extent  that  distinc- 
tions melt  together  v/here  they  belong,  we  are  united. 

3.  The  object  of  the  missionary  enterprise  is  to  estab- 
lish in  each  field  a  living  Church — a  Church  with  its  own 
personality,  strong  in  its  own  conviction,  faithful  in  its 
own  ministry.  The  attitude  of  missions  to  these  churches 
should  be  the  same  as  the  attitude  of  a  wise  father  to  his 
son.  He  will  help  him  in  every  way  in  his  power  and 
endeavour  to  acquaint  him  with  all  the  lessons  of  the  past, 
and  to  place  at  his  disposal  all  his  best  traditions,  but 
he  will  not  attempt  to  stifle  his  son's  individuality,  to 
clothe  him  in  his  ancestor's  garments,  to  subject  his  mind 
to  any  statutory  sovereignty.  His  aim  is  to  train  a  free 
personality,  who  shall  take  up  all  that  his  father  can  do 


WESTEEN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    211 

for  him  and  go  beyond  it.  We  are  not  acting  in  this  way 
toward  these  churches  if  we  fix  them  in  our  own  mould. 
We  have  recognized  theoretically  that  we  must  not  do 
this.  The  principles  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
state : 

"We  of  the  Church  of  England  are  bound  by  our 
fundamental  rules  to  train  up  every  congregation  gathered 
from  the  heathen  according  to  the  discipline  and  worship 
of  the  Church  of  England.  But  our  own  Prayer  Book 
has  laid  down  the  principle  that  every  National  Church 
is  at  liberty  to  change  its  ceremonies,  and  adapt  itself  to 
the  national  taste,  and  therefore  we  look  forward  to  the 
time  when  the  native  Christian  communities  shall  have 
attained  that  magnitude  and  maturity  which  will  entitle 
them  to  worship  and  perfect  themselves  according  to  the 
standard  of  God's  Holy  Word." 

But  we  indefinitely  postpone  this  day  to  the  extent  that 
we  lay  the  authority  of  our  formularies  upon  these  weak 
shoulders. 

4.  It  is  just  because  we  have  thus  over-awed  and 
over-burdened  these  churches,  in  some  measure,  with  our 
Western  forms,  that  there  has  been  no  independent  theo- 
logical thought  among  these  peoples.  The  Report  of 
Commission  II  at  the  Edinburgh  Conference  quotes  the 
statement  of  a  leading  Indian  missionary : 

"  It  is  one  of  the  serious  defects  of  our  Indian  literature 
that  our  educated  Christians  have  not  thus  far  separated 
themselves  from  the  leading-strings  of  Western  mission- 
aries in  matters  of  Christian  thought.  ...  I  have 
hardly  known  one  Indian  Christian  thinker  whose  the- 
ology has  revealed  definite  constructive  thought,  who  has 
been  able  to  shake  himself  away  from  the  trammels  of 
the  West." 

And  Dr.  Gibson  of  China  adds ; 


212      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

"  The  Church  in  Japan  has  apparently  given  evidence 
of  more  intellectual  activity  than  either  India  or  China, 
but  it  has  been  so  powerfully  under  the  domination  of  its 
acceptance  of  everything  Western  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  its  modern  life  that,  while  there  is  increasing  freedom 
in  the  use  of  the  pen  in  contributions  to  magazines  and 
newspapers,  there  is  not  much  sign  yet  of  any  independent 
treatment  of  the  great  themes  of  the  Christian  revelation." 

"  Throughout  the  whole  of  India,"  says  Mr.  Bernard 
Lucas,  "  one  looks  in  vain  for  anything  that  can  be  cor- 
rectly described  as  an  indigenous  Christianity.  The  In- 
dian Church  has  produced  not  a  single  theologian,  nor 
has  it  given  birth  to  a  single  heresy.  When  we  contrast 
the  first  century  of  Christianity  in  Europe  with  the  first 
century  of  modern  Christian  missions  in  India,  this  state- 
ment is  deeply  significant.  The  contact  of  Christian 
thought  with  that  of  Greece  was  productive  of  a  ferment 
in  both,  which  had  an  immense  influence  on  the  spread 
of  Christianity  in  the  West.  In  India  we  have  a  philo- 
sophical atmosphere  quite  as  stimulating,  and  far  more 
permeating  than  that  of  Greece  when  Christianity  first 
came  into  contact  with  it ;  yet  while  Christianity  has  pro- 
foundly stirred  Hindu  thought  and  feeling,  Hindu 
thought  has  had  absolutely  no  influence  on  Indian  Chris- 
tian thought.  The  reason  is  that,  with  few  exceptions, 
the  Christian  convert  was  never  distinctively  a  Hindu. 
It  was  not  to  him  as  a  Hindu  that  the  Christianity  which 
was  presented  appealed.  Hinduism  had  more  or  less 
lost  its  hold  upon  him,  or  he  was  outside  the  sphere  of 
Hindu  thought  and  feeling,  and  Christianity  appealed  to 
him  on  its  own  Western  merits." 


What  these  people  have  needed  was  a  greater  burden 
of  responsibility  for  theological  work  of  their  own. 

5.  The  introduction  of  our  divergent  theological  state- 
ments, to  the  extent  to  which  they  are  introduced  at  all, 
confuses  and  perplexes  those  to  whom  they  are  offered, 
and  who  are  unable  to  judge  for  themselves,  and  so  di- 


WESTERN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    213 

vides  them.  It  divides  them,  also,  along  lines  of  cleavage 
alien  and  unnatural  to  them.  It  may  be  that  the  living 
native  Church  when  established  will  itself  divide,  but  if 
so,  it  will  be  along  the  line  of  natural  divergences,  and 
the  new  denominations  will  represent  a  reality  of  con- 
viction and  not  the  mechanical  adoption  of  alien  tradi- 
tions. It  may  be  held,  also,  that  the  native  churches,  if 
we  establish  them  in  unity,  will  be  able  to  retain  their 
unity.  Those  movings  of  the  Spirit  of  God  which  are 
drawing  us  together  in  the  West,  may  surely  be  trusted 
to  hold  together  that  which  we  found  in  unity  on  the 
mission  field. 

6.  The  introduction  of  our  Western  forms  and  state- 
ments lays  the  emphasis  on  intellectual  definition  instead 
of  upon  the  actual  experience  of  Christ  and  His  practical 
service   in  life.     Definition  always   divides,   while   lifel 
unites.  ^ 

7.  Do  we  deem  our  present  theological  statements 
final  and  complete?  Have  we  reached  the  limit  of  our 
apprehension  of  Christian  truth  and  our  power  to  de- 
clare it?  Surely  not.  Our  present  statements  have  led 
us  into  a  larger  truth  than  men  had  previously  known, 
and  the  road  still  lies  open  before  us.  "  If  it  had  been 
possible,"  as  Dr.  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall  wrote  in  "  The 
Universal  Elements  of  Christian  Religion,"  "  for  one  set 
of  men  to  legislate  the  form  and  contents  of  religious 
thinking  in  a  manner  permanently  adequate  for  all  Chris- 
tian experience,  our  conception  of  the  vastness  of  the 
revelation  of  God  in  Christ  would  shrink.  But  this 
never  has  been  possible.  The  successive  theological  re- 
interpretations  have  borne  witness  to  the  sincerity,  and 
often  to  the  insight  of  those  that  framed  them.  For  those 
who  used  them  they  have  appeared  to  have  a  relative 
sufficiency.     As  presentments  of  Christian  thought,  and 


214     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

interpretations  of  revealed  truth,  they  have  been  honoured 
of  God  and  serviceable  to  man.  But  their  noblest  quality 
has  been,  not  their  relative  adequacy,  but  their  absolute 
inadequacy ;  not  their  direct  witness  to  certain  aspects  im- 
pressing the  minds  of  those  who  framed  them,  but  their 
indirect  witness,  through  their  insufficiency  for  other 
minds,  to  the  immensity  of  the  scope  of  the  manifestation 
to  the  world,  of  God  in  Christ.  Had  Europe  slept  in 
ignorance  beneath  the  limited  view  of  God  and  His  uni- 
verse that  prevailed  in  the  age  of  Hildebrand,  and  was 
not  materially  enlarged  by  the  Council  of  Trent,  one 
might  conclude  that  Christianity  is  but  an  ethnic  faith. 
But  with  the  rebirth  of  learning  and  the  emancipation  of 
thought  came  the  rolling  back  of  clouds,  the  uncovering 
of  landscapes,  the  multitudinous  self- fulfillments  of  God ; 
and  the  students  of  truth  awoke;  and  every  one  had  a 
doctrine,  a  tongue,  a  revelation,  an  interpretation;  and 
lo !  the  wideness  of  God's  mercy  was  as  the  wideness  of 
the  sea — and  the  love  of  God  was  broader  than  the 
measure  of  man's  mind." 

Neither  our  Western  statements  nor  our  Western  in- 
corporations of  the  Gospel  in  life  are  final. 

8.  Our  creeds  are  changing  fast  in  the  West,  and  we 
are  witnessing  a  great  melting  together  of  that  which 
was  supposed  to  be  contradictory.  It  is  not  that  we  are 
discovering  that  our  statements  were  not  true.  What 
we  are  perceiving  is  that  they  were  not  the  whole  truth — 
that  we  need  a  larger  comprehension  that  shall  gather  up 
the  broken  lights  of  our  separate  systems.  Our  whole 
struggle  is  to  escape  from  what  was  national  or  sectional, 
and  to  achieve  that  which  is  universal.  Shall  we  seek, 
at  such  a  time,  to  perpetuate  abroad  that  exclusive  temper 
of  the  ancient  statements  from  which  we  are  just  escap- 
ing at  home? 


WESTERN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    215 

9.  Moreover,  it  is  by  the  very  offer  of  our  Gospel,  not 
in  its  denominational  distinctiveness  but  in  its  elements 
of  universality  to  the  non-Christian  nations,  that  we  our- 
selves are  to  be  given  the  correctives  and  expansions  of 
which  we  stand  in  need.  It  is  not  that  the  non-Christian 
religions  are  to  give  these  to  us,  but  that  they  are  to 
come  from  the  contact  of  Christianity  with  new  sections 
of  that  humanity  which  is  the  body  of  Christ,  and  in 
which  and  by  which  alone  in  its  universal  completeness, 
can  the  full  truth  be  known. 

10.  It  is  recognized  that  the  message  of  the  Gospel  is 
a  coherent  message  to  be  addressed  to  the  minds  of  men 
as  well  as  to  their  hearts.  The  question  of  such  a  procla- 
mation is  not  at  issue.  The  question  is  as  to  whether 
this  proclamation  is  to  be  made  in  terms  of  the  New 
Testament  and  of  the  general  Christian  concordat,  or  in 
the  divergent  terms  of  our  Western  creedal  statements. 
*'  The  question  is  often  asked,"  said  Dr.  Harada  at  the 
Edinburgh  Conference,  "  in  some  sort  of  way  like  this, 
are  the  expressions  of  faith  as  formulated  by  the  Western 
churches  acceptable  to  and  sufficient  for  the  various 
churches  in  the  East?  In  answering  such  a  question  as 
that,  I  wish  to  speak  frankly  and  boldly  of  what  I  re- 
gard as  the  fundamental  principle  which  should  ever  be 
kept  in  our  view,  namely,  Christianity  is  life — the  life 
of  God  in  man — nothing  other  than  that  can  be  considered 
as  real  Christianity.  The  life  cannot  be  translated  into 
another  life  except  through  that  life.  The  organization 
and  the  system  of  doctrine  will  follow  on,  but  all  the  or- 
ganizations and  the  systems  of  doctrine  are  not  powerful 
enough  to  produce  that  life.  In  saying  this  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  there  is  no  need  of  organization,  nor  do  I 
mean  to  say  that  there  is  no  need  of  the  statement  of 
faith — not  at  all.     What  I  want  to  say  is  that  the  ex- 


216     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

pressions  of  faith  must  be  the  fruits  of  the  Christian 
life  and  the  spiritual  experience.  Perhaps  some  of  you 
may  say  that  it  is  too  commonplace,  too  simple,  but  let  me 
remind  you  that  very  often  the  simplest  truths  are  the 
truths  very  easily  forgotten  by  us.  The  essential  faith 
of  Christianity  is  our  faith  in  the  personal  God  our 
Father,  in  a  living  Christ  and  in  the  Holy  Spirit  who  is 
living  with  us  all  the  time.  Teach  the  Bible  without  too 
much  of  our  interpretation,  and  then  be  patient  as  well 
as  watchful  to  await  the  outcome  of  the  Christian  life  in 
non-Christian  lands.  I  think  we  want  faith  in  God,  but 
we  want  faith  in  man,  not  in  the  goodness  of  man,  but  in 
man  as  the  living  temple  of  God.  We  should  not  judge 
of  others  by  our  own  thoughts.  Our  system  and  your 
system  are  not  necessarily  the  perfect  or  final  type  of 
Christianity  and  therefore  in  the  matter  of  the  expressions 
of  faith  in  non-Christian  lands  we  must  be  patient,  we 
must  wait  for  the  time  of  the  real  expression  of  their 
spiritual  experience.  That  is  important,  not  only  for  the 
sake  of  the  churches  in  non-Christian  lands,  but  I  think 
that  is  important  for  the  sake  of  the  mother  churches, 
because  in  all  those  and  only  in  all  those  our  Lord's  full 
personality  will  be  glorified  and  revealed  in  all  the 
world." 

"  Whether  we  like  to  confess  it  or  not,"  writes  the 
Rev.  Edwin  Greaves  in  the  East  and  West  for  January, 
1910,  in  an  article  entitled  "  India  for  the  Christian 
Church  or  for  Christ  ?  "  *'  the  fact  remains  that  Chris- 
tianity, the  Christianity  which  is  set  forth  by  missionaries, 
is  Western.  The  formulation  of  its  doctrines,  the  pro- 
portion and  relative  weight  of  its  parts,  its  ecclesiastical 
organizations,  its  forms  of  worship,  and,  in  part  also,  its 
ideals  of  the  religious  life,  are  Western.  It  is  inevitable 
that  they  should  be  so.  But  Christ  is  not  Western,  and  it 
is  possible  for  men  to  accept  Christ  and  to  become  His 


WESTERN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    217 

true  followers  without  identifying  themselves  with  any 
Western  church.  Jesus  Christ  is  '  the  Way,  the  Truth, 
and  the  Life  ' ;  He  also  is  *  the  Door/  .  .  .  My  own 
strong  belief  is  that  if  men  from  the  north  and  south, 
from  the  east  and  west  of  India,  would  take  up  this 
attitude,  and,  without  identifying  themselves  with  any 
Western  church,  would  take  the  New  Testament,  and, 
seeking  God's  guidance,  *  work  out  their  own  salvation 
with  fear  and  trembling,'  a  day  would  dawn  for  India 
which  longing  eyes  have  watched  for  for  long,  and  yearn- 
ing hearts  have  prayed  for." 

II.  Our  doctrinal  forms  of  statement  fill  a  place  of 
diminishing  importance  in  the  life  of  our  churches  in 
the  West.  Dr.  Herrick  Johnson,  in  a  pamphlet  entitled 
"  Why  I  am  a  Presbyterian,"  glories  in  the  fact  of  the 
elemental  simplicity  of  the  foundations  of  his  church. 
"  It  demands  nothing  whatever  for  admission  to  its  fold," 
he  writes,  "  except  trustful  belief  in  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  and  credible  evidence  of  that  belief  in  the  daily 
life.  Applicants  for  church  membership  are  not  required 
to  give  assent  to  an  extended  creed.  .  .  .  The  one 
and  the  only  belief  she  insists  on  is  beUef  in  Christ.  The 
applicant  must  be  a  Christian,  that  is  all — a  new  creature 
in  Christ  Jesus,  accepting  Jesus  as  Saviour  and  Master, 
trusting  in  Him  alone  for  salvation,  and  submissive  to  His 
revealed  will.  The  candidate  may  have  imperfect  views 
of  doctrine,  imperfect  views  of  duty,  imperfect  views 
of  the  person  of  Christ,  may  be  Calvinist  or  Arminian, 
Sabellian  or  Apollinarian,  annihilationist  or  final  restora- 
tionist,  may  question  infant  baptism  or  stumble  at  the 
Trinity ;  but  if  he  loves  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  trusts 
in  Him  as  his  personal,  divine  Saviour,  and  gives  credible 
evidence  of  it  in  a  Christian  life,  the  door  of  the  Presby- 
terian Church  is  open  to  him,  and  all  the  privileges  of  her 
hallowed  communion  are  his." 


218     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

If  something  more  than  such  a  simple  confession  should 
be  required  of  those  joining  the  new  churches  on  the 
mission  field,  why  should  more  be  asked  than  the  Apostles' 
Creed,  as  is  customary  in  the  missions  in  the  Anglican 
communion  and  many  others?  There  should  be,  of 
course,  the  most  careful  Bible  teaching,  both  at  home 
and  abroad,  but  why  should  not  Christ  and  the  simple 
facts  of  Gospel  faith,  embodied  in  the  Apostles'  Creed, 
suffice  as  our  united  message  and  requirement?  "The 
method  of  presenting  Christianity,"  writes  Professor  Mu- 
kerji,  of  India,  "  will  change  with  the  country  and  the 
times,  but  not  the  body  of  the  message.  The  questioner 
is  right  in  refusing  to  accept  anything  as  the  norm 
of  Christianity  except  the  New  Testament  Christian- 
ity." 

12.  It  is  folly  to  say  that  there  is  no  Western  type  of 
Christianity  with  statements  and  institutions  distinctively 
Western.  We  know  how  real  are  the  distinctive  types  of 
Roman,  Greek  and  Teutonic  Christianity — how  wide  the 
difference  between  the  North  and  South  American  types, 
between  the  English  and  the  Continental.  Where  we  are 
aware  of  distinctions  like  these,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine 
that  the  East  is  not  aware  of  the  reality  of  the  Western 
character  of  our  statements  and  forms. 

13.  It  is  true  that  much  opposition  to  Christianity  and 
much  misunderstanding  of  its  character  are  due  to  its 
essential  principles  and  to  its  unhappy  association,  in 
Eastern  minds,  with  the  political  misdeeds  of  the  na- 
tions whose  representatives  are  bringing  Christianity, 
but  these  facts  make  it  all  the  more  important  that  the 
missionary  problem  should  not  be  made  more  intricate 
and  difficult  by  adding  unnecessary  elements  of  confusion 
and  resistance.  We  remember  the  incident  which  Dr. 
Hume  told  at  the  Edinburgh  Conference : 


WESTERN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    219 

"Recently  when  I  asked  the  one  who  is  easily  the 
most  influential  political  leader  in  Western  India,  and 
who  is  also  a  religious  man,  what  was  his  personal  at- 
titude toward  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  what  was  his 
estimate  of  the  probable  increase  of  a  reverential  atti- 
tude to  our  Lord,  he  instantly  replied :  '  Jesus  Christ  is 
hopelessly  handicapped  by  His  connection  with  the  West/ 
That  was  an  exaggerated  statement.  But  it  is  the  simple 
fact  that  while  many  thoughtful  Indians  are  being  drawn 
to  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  many  are  hindered  and  alienated 
by  the  organization  and  by  some  of  the  requirements  of 
the  Indian  churches.  For  their  sakes  it  is  desirable  that 
the  Indian  Church  should  grow  on  national  lines,  with 
more  Indian  modes  of  worship,  music,  organization,  doc- 
trinal statements,  and  leadership." 


Where  there  is  a  necessary  antagonism,  due  to  funda- 
mental divergences,  all  unnecessary  grounds  for  prejudice 
and  misunderstanding  should  be  laid  aside. 

14.  Our  present  modes  of  presenting  Christianity  are 
not  satisfactorily  effective.  Professor  Hogg,  of  Madras, 
argues  that  the  theology  which  we  have  worked  out  is 
designed  to  cover  needs  which  the  Hindu  does  not  so 
deeply  feel,  while  for  other  needs  which  he  feels  with 
crushing  weight,  our  theology  has  no  adequate  message. 
"  These  two  factors,''  he  says,  "  obviously  render  it  hope- 
less to  expect  to  make  the  necessary  spiritual  impression 
by  interpreting  Christ  to  the  Hindu  directly  in  terms  of 
our  Western  doctrines.  There  are  only  two  alternatives 
open  to  us.  Either  we  must  set  to  work  to  develop  in  his 
mind  a  new  framework  of  ideas  which  will  make  it 
possible  for  him  to  begin  to  feel  our  own  type  of  spiritual 
hunger,  or  we  must  ourselves  learn  to  feel  his  type  of 
spiritual  hunger  and  at  the  same  time  discover  for  our- 
selves in  Christ  the  fulfillment  of  that  hunger  and  learn 
to  present  Christ  in  that  light." 


220     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

And  Principal  Hogg  goes  on  to  state  his  conviction  that 
we  must  follow  both  of  these  courses.  What  he  so 
deeply  feels  was  felt  as  the  great  problem  of  his  life  by 
the  late  Alfred  Jones,  of  the  Province  of  Shantung,  who 
was  convinced  that  our  Western  theological  interpreta- 
tions fall  far  short  of  those  universal  statements  of  the 
Christian  truth  for  which  he  sought  with  prayer  and 
longing  all  his  days,  in  order  that  Christ  might  be  com- 
mended to  those  to  whom  Mr.  Jones  felt  He  might  come 
through  some  less  opaque  medium  than  that  through 
which  the  Church  sought  to  communicate  Him. 

15.  And  lastly,  the  Church  seems  to  be  strongest  in 
those  lands  where  it  has  most  completely  emancipated 
itself  from  the  West  and  begun  to  build  its  walls  on  the 
fundamental  and  universal  elements  in  Christianity,  sep- 
arated from  the  elements  of  theological  divergence  in  the 
West.  In  Japan  there  are  strong  self-supporting  in- 
dependent native  bodies  doing  their  own  thinking,  main- 
taining their  own  institutions,  living  their  own  life  in 
Christ.  Similar  churches  are  found  in  Korea,  in  Africa 
and  in  other  lands,  and  wherever  they  are  found  it  is 
seen  that  they  rest  on  the  New  Testament  and  upon 
those  great  Christian  facts  and  principles  which  are 
indisputably  universal  in  our  faith. 

Ill 

Here,  then,  is  a  statement  of  the  case  on  either  side. 
One  is  tempted  to  go  on  enlarging  the  argument  on  one 
side  or  the  other,  or  pointing  out  the  fallacy  or  neces- 
sary qualification  of  that  which  has  been  urged.  What 
general  conclusion  shall  we  draw?  Obviously  it  is  de- 
sirable to  recognize  the  facts.  Each  of  these  views  is 
held  by  earnest  men  who  are  acting  upon  them,  and  the 
situation  with  which  we  have  to  deal  is  a  situation  of 


WESTEEN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    221 

reality.     Men  of  mediating  minds,  I  think,  might  recog- 
nize such  points  as  these : 

I.  The  great  body  of  Christian  people  who  are  carry- 
ing on  the  missionary  enterprise  and  the  great  majority 
of  the  representatives  whom  they  have  sent  out  are  now 
substantially  one  in  Christian  doctrine.  Their  agreement 
extends  beyond  the  Apostles'  Creed.  How  wide  it  is  and 
how  united  is  the  statement  of  Christian  facts  and  con- 
victions which  it  is  possible  to  make  is  illustrated  by  the 
deliverance  of  the  missionaries  in  Japan  who,  feeling  the 
need  of  a  united  statement  to  the  nation,  issued  in  1914 
the  paper  entitled  "  A  Message  to  the  Japanese  People," 
covering  the  following  points : 

Jesus  the  Christ. 

The  Fatherhood  of  God. 

The  Kingdom  of  God. 

Son  of  Man  and  Son  of  God. 

Man  and  Sin. 

The  Message  of  Christ. 

The  Death  of  Christ. 

The  Resurrection  and  Ascension  of  Christ. 

The  Holy  Spirit. 

Jesus  Christ  the  God-Man. 

The  Significance  of  the  Cross. 

The  Significance  of  the  Resurrection. 

General  Principles  of  Christian  Living. 

The  Christian  Religion  and  Society. 

The  Christian  Religion  and  the  State. 

The  Christian  Church  and  the  Great  Commission. 

Christian  Worship. 

The  Bible. 

If  the  missionaries  in  Japan  can  do  this,  so,  also,  can 
the  missionaries  In  other  lands,  and  a  new  power  and 
unity  would  come  to  the  movement  in  China  and  India 
and  every  other  field.     Perplexing  problems  which  will 


222     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

otherwise  arise  would  be  forestalled,  and  the  great  goals 
which  we  seek  would  be  brought  appreciably  nearer  if 
in  each  nation  all  the  missionaries  at  work  could  agree  on 
some  such  utterance  as  has  been  signed  by  700  of  the 
1,000  missionaries  in  Japan,  or  if,  even  better,  we  could 
agree  upon  such  a  statement  here  at  home. 

2.  Our  chief  difficulties  in  the  way  of  union  on  the 
mission  field  spring  not  from  doctrinal  disagreements 
nor  from  the  importation  of  Western  creeds,  but  from 
our  divergent  views  of  polity  and  the  sacraments,  and 
from  the  types  of  action  and  temper  of  mind  due  to  these 
divergences  or  producing  them.  Against  atheism,  ma- 
terialism and  pantheism,  all  the  Christian  bodies  speak 
with  a  common  voice.  It  is  in  the  matter  of  organization 
and  sacrament,  in  the  symbols  which  are  the  confessedly 
mortal  elements,  that  our  difficulties  lie — not  in  the 
things  that  are  unseen  and  eternal. 

3.  There  is  a  life  in  Christ  and  a  truth  of  Christ  which 
all  of  us  recognize,  and  in  which  we  know  ourselves  to  be 
one.  The  saints  of  all  the  ages  and  all  the  communions 
are  our  saints.  Whatever  the  type  of  polity  or  of  sacra- 
mental conviction,  we  recognize  this  unifying  life.  It 
binds  all  Christians,  no  matter  how  wide  their  divergences 
or  contradictions.  Monists  and  pluralists,  individualists 
and  socialists,  Quakers  and  sacramentarians,  independ- 
ents and  Episcopalians,— all  these  and  more  recognize  and 
joyfully  acknowledge  the  unity  both  of  life  and  of  truth 
that  they  have  in  Christ.  That  unity  surely  should  be 
our  first  message  to  the  world.  The  exaltation  of  this 
idea  of  our  common  Christian  possession  is  often  spoken 
of  in  these  days  with  some  reproach  as  "  the  irreducible 
minimum,"  or  "  the  lowest  common  denominator."  But 
ought  these  phrases  to  intimidate  us?  Are  they  not  es- 
sentially misleading?    It  is  not  minimum  but  maximum, 


WESTEEN  THEOLOGICAL  STATEMENTS    223 

not  lowest  but  greatest  common  denominators  with  which 
we  are  dealing.  Is  it  not  a  fact  that  our  Lord  is  the 
common  possession  of  us  all— that  we  all  find  life  in  Him, 
that  we  all  believe  that  the  true  Church  is  His  body,  and 
that  all  who  are  in  His  body  must  be  in  that  true  Church  ? 
If  we  go  on  estimating  our  great  body  of  common  Chris- 
tian faith,  do  we  come  to  a  result  that  may  be  spoken 
of  by  Christian  men  in  minimizing  words  ?  Has  not  the 
day  come  at  last  when  we  may  think  as  reverently  and 
speak  as  boldly  of  the  greater  things  in  which  we  agree 
as  of  the  lesser  in  which  we  differ?  Are  these  latter 
entitled  to  a  higher  reverence  than  the  former?  How- 
ever dear  they  may  be  to  us,  however  important  to  the 
whole  Christian  wealth,  ought  they  not  still  to  be  given 
the  place  which  the  actual  facts  of  Christianity  assign 
them,  and  be  thought  of  as  a  contribution  of  each  part 
to  the  whole,  and  not  as  an  exaction  by  each  part  from 
the  whole. 

4.  It  is  this  common  experience  of  Christ,  interpreted 
as  it  can  only  be  interpreted  by  the  body  of  the  common 
evangelical  truth,  ministered  to  man  as  it  may  legitimately 
be  administered  by  a  wide  variety  of  symbol,  which  is 
the  central  and  indispensable  thing  in  the  kingdom  of 
Christ.  It  ought  to  be  the  central  and  indispensable 
thing  in  the  Church,  otherwise  we  erect  in  the  Church 
principles  at  variance  with  the  principles  of  the  kingdom 
of  Christ  and  of  heaven.  These  symbols  and  their  in- 
terpretation will  of  necessity  vary.  No  symbol  is  capable 
of  a  uniform  universal  application,  but  the  central  Chris- 
tian experience  and  the  truth  which  produces  it  and 
which  it  embodies  are  universal  in  the  same  sense  and 
degree  to  which  the  need  to  which  they  answer  are  uni- 
versal. In  proportion  as  we  perceive  this  and  act  upon  it, 
as  we  are  doing  more  and  more,  as  a  Power  mightier  than 


224     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

we  will  lead  us  yet  more  and  more  to  do,  will  our  mis- 
sions to  the  world  be  lifted  above  the  weakening  in- 
fluence of  whatever  divides  us  or  distorts  Christian  values 
by  exalting  secondary  things  into  primary  places  and  we 
will  be  given  the  authority  which  awaits  our  recovery 
of  the  accent  that  is  universal  and  whole.. 


XI 

ARE  A  RESTATEMENT   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN 
MESSAGE  TO  THE  NON-CHRISTIAN  PEO- 
PLES  AND   A   REINTERPRETATION    OF 
THE  MISSIONARY  OBJECTIVE  FOR 
THE    CHURCH    AT    HOME 
NECESSARY? 

IT  is  bold  to  attempt  to  deal  in  any  adequate  way 
with  such  a  theme  as  this  is  in  a  single  chapter.  And 
the  bigness  of  it  is  not  the  only  difficulty.  There  are 
still  greater  difficulties  in  its  presumptuousness.  Who 
is  any  individual  that  he  should  presume  to  state  what 
the  missionary  message  of  the  Church  should  be?  The 
best  that  he  can  do  is  to  speak  his  own  small  word,  from 
his  own  narrow  angle  of  vision.  The  message  of  the 
Church  is  a  corporate  message  issued  through  diverse 
bodies  of  men,  issued  by  many  more  processes  than 
those  which  we  control.  One  man  would  be  vain  and 
foolish  indeed  if  he  thought  that  single-handed  he  could 
advise  his  brethren  or  the  Church  as  to  what  the  state- 
ment or  the  restatement  of  the  message  in  any  period 
should  be  for  all.  I  have  done  the  best  that  one  could 
do  to  check  one's  own  limitations  and  weakness  here 
by  asking  twenty  or  thirty  trusted  and  capable  friends 
if  they  would  not  help  in  suggesting  what  might  be  said. 
And  I  think  nothing  is  said  that  has  not  the  support  of 
one  or  more,  or  all  of  these  whom  one  may  trust. 

There  is  the  further  element  of  difficulty,  namely,  that 
impossible  comparisons  are  involved.    It  is  a  restatement 

225 


226     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

that  is  spoken  of,  a  statement  different  therefore  from 
some  other  statement.  But  what  was  that  other  state- 
ment? No  one  of  us  can  say  what  the  statement  of  the 
missionary  message  has  been  at  any  time.  It  has  been 
uttered  through  many  minds,  in  many  different  ways. 
Nobody  can  codify  it  in  any  single  expression  and  say 
thus  and  thus  has  been  the  missionary  message  that  now 
must  be  restated  in  our  time. 

And  definitions  are  involved,  by  virtue  of  the  very 
necessity  of  these  comparisons — definitions  that  of  course 
for  many  raise  and  settle  the  whole  issue. 

If  on  the  one  hand  we  mean  by  a  restatement  of  the 
missionary  message  any  tampering  with  its  substance, 
our  answer  is  unequivocally,  "  No.*'  Time  brings  changes 
undoubtedly,  different  and  larger  understandings,  altered 
modes  of  expression,  but  not  even  the  great  experiences 
through  which  we  have  been  passing  in  the  last  four 
tragic  years  of  human  history  have  involved  an)  altera- 
tions whatever  in  the  substance  of  the  Gospel  or  of  the 
elements  of  the  message  by  which  the  Gospel  has  been 
expressed  through  the  life  of  the  Church.  I  am  reminded 
of  some  recent  words  of  Principal  Garvie  that  have  had 
their  application  to  more  experiences  in  human  life  than 
this  one :  "  Informed  and  responsible  theologians  have 
not  found  it  necessary  to  revise  the  articles  of  their  faith, 
as  the  war  has  not  disclosed  facts  about  God  or  man,  sin 
or  salvation,  life  or  death,  duty  or  destiny,  which  had 
hitherto  escaped  their  scrutiny." 

If  this  restatement  means  any  denial  of  the  facts,  again 
we  answer,  "  No."  There  are  certain  great  facts  that  lie 
impregnably  at  the  base  of  every  form  of  this  message, 
the  fact  of  the  incarnation  and  the  fact  of  the  resurrec- 
tion, and  any  restatement  of  the  message  that  means  ob- 
scuring those  facts,  or  any  tampering  with  those  facts. 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    227 

or  any  denial  of  those  facts  is  a  statement  not  for  us  in 
loyalty  to  our  Lord  and  His  truth. 

Or,  once  again,  if  this  restatement  contemplates  now 
the  attempt  at  any  elaborate  formulation  of  new  creedal 
deliverances,  we  say,  "  No."  Not  because  the  old  creedal 
deliverances  are  perfect,  not  because  the  day  may  not 
come  when  they  will  need  to  be  revised  and  rewritten, 
but  this  is  not  the  opportune  time.  In  the  non-Christian 
lands  the  Christian  Church  has  not  yet  come  to  sufficient 
maturity  to  undertake  this  task,  and  the  intellectual  at- 
mosphere in  which  we  live  in  the  West  is  not  now  fa- 
vourable to  such  an  undertaking. 

Or,  in  the  fourth  place,  if  we  mean  by  this  restatement 
any  merely  ethical  or  moral  construction  of  the  Gospel, 
slurring  or  denying  its  supernaturalism,  again  we  answer, 
"  No."  I  was  reading  the  other  day  the  letter  which  a 
former  American  University  president  wrote  after  a 
visit  to  China  in  commendation  of  the  work  of  the  Prince- 
ton Y.  M.  C.  A,  in  the  city  of  Peking,  in  which  he  said : 

"Although  I  was  no  more  interested  than  I  am  now 
in  the  evangelistic  work  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  I  was  very 
much  struck  with  the  work  done  at  the  Princeton  Uni- 
versity Center  at  Peking,  particularly  in  two  subjects,  in 
the  English  language  and  in  athletics.  The  importation 
into  China  of  baseball  and  other  out-of-door  sports  is,  to 
.my  thinking,  one  of  the  very  best  services  which  Chris- 
tian missions  there  have  rendered  to  the  Chinese  people." 

A  good  service,  undoubtedly,  but  if  it  is  proposed  that 
the  missionary  instead  of  carrying  the  New  Testament  in 
his  hand  should  bear  instead  an  Abercrombie  &  Fitch 
catalogue  and  the  last  rules  of  the  National  Baseball 
League,  we  say,  "  No."  Those  are  interesting  docu- 
ments but  the  old  statement  of  the  Gospel  is  better.    One 


228     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

does  not  deny  that  the  leaves  and  the  grapes  are  essential, 
but  the  Ufe  of  the  vine  is  more  necessary  than  any  leaf 
upon  the  branches,  or  the  clusters  of  grapes  that  it  bears. 
We  could  better  forego  one  whole  harvest  than  to  let  go 
the  abiding  life  that  shall  bring  forth  all  the  harvests 
through  all  the  years. 

No  doubt  in  days  like  these  a  good  deal  can  be  said  in 
favour  of  what  one  of  the  preachers  on  the  other  side 
described  as  "  a  kit-bag  religion,"  which  he  was  urging 
upon  the  soldiers.  Indeed  there  is  need  of  an  even 
simpler  religion  than  will  go  into  a  kit-bag,  a  religion  so 
simple  that  a  little  child  can  understand  and  bear  it.  But 
for  the  salvation  of  a  world,  for  the  dealing  with  the 
mighty  and  intricate  problems  that  now  confront  us  as 
we  go  forth  into  the  new  day,  there  cannot  be  any 
letting  go  of  all  that  is  dynamic  and  most  central  in  that 
for  which  we  stand,  and  the  whole  mighty  outreach  and 
implication  of  Christianity  will  be  required. 

Or  yet,  once  more,  if  by  this  restatement  we  mean  atiy 
compromising  adaptation  with  heathenism,  we  say,  "  No.'* 
It  is  not  that  we  have  not  a  great  deal  to  learn  ourselves. 
It  is  not  a  satisfying  statement  to  our  mind  to  say  that 
we  are  going  out  to  the  other  side  of  the  world  to  lift 
these  people  to  our  level,  to  share  with  them  that  which 
we  possess.  We  go  out  that  we  and  they  may  be  lifted  to 
a  higher  level  than  we  ourselves  have  won,  and  may 
know  a  great  deal  more  than  we  ourselves  have  as  yet 
achieved.  There  are  hidden  values  in  Christianity  which 
are  to  be  brought  out  by  its  offer  to  all  men,  the  dis- 
covery of  which  will  make  us  glad  of  undiscerned  wealth 
in  our  own  possession,  but  this  is  not  to  compromise 
with  any  falsehood,  nor  to  hide  anything  essential,  nor 
to  surrender  anything  vital.  If  these  are  what  men  mean 
when  they  speak  of  a  restatement,  we  say,  "  No." 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE    229 

But  on  the  other  hand  unmistakably  the  answer  is, 
"Yes."  There  must  be  perpetually  fresh  restatements 
of  everything,  and  again  and  again,  in  every  life.  There 
must  be  restatements  adjusted  to  the  audience  to  which 
^the  Gospel  is  addressed.  What  are  our  four  Gospels  but 
attempts  to  express  the  truth  of  the  Gospel,  and  to  tell 
the  life  of  Christ  to  different  types  of  mind  and  different 
bodies  of  men?  They  represent  varying  shades  of  tra- 
dition, guided  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  in  the  deliberate 
effort  to  restate  the  truth  of  the  Gospel  to  the  varying 
minds  of  men.  What  is  the  rest  of  the  New  Testament  ? 
St.  Paul's  teaching,  St.  John's  teaching,  St.  Peter's  teach- 
ing, what  is  this  but  on  the  part  of  each  of  them  an 
effort  to  state  the  Gospel  in  his  way  to  the  people  to 
whom  it  was  the  will  of  God  that  he  should  go.  And 
when  we  confront  new  audiences  in  our  day,  the  Gospel 
IS  not  preached  when  we  have  said  the  words  that  satisfy 
us,  it  is  only  preached  when  the  message  has  been  spoken 
that  makes  Christ  a  reality,  that  enters  or  ought  to  enter 
the  soul  to  whom  the  words  are  uttered. 

Men  must  be  spoken  to  in  the  language  of  their  own 
day  and  in  the  atmosphere  which  they  themselves  breathe. 
And  the  message  must  be  uttered  out  of  the  growing  life 
and  experience  of  every  man  and  the  growing  life  and 
experience  of  the  Church.  Is  there  one  of  us  who  can 
repeat  verbatim  the  addresses  we  made  ten,  five,  or  two 
years  ago?  Unhappy  is  the  lot  of  that  man  who  can. 
Life  is  an  ever  changing  thing,  an  ever  enlarging  and 
expanding  thing,  and  no  man  of  us  dare  say  to-day  the 
same  bare  words  that  he  said  even  a  few  years  ago. 
New  vision  should  have  come  to  him,  new  understanding, 
new  illumination  that  makes  the  whole  statement  of  his 
message  a  richer,  a  more  vitally  veracious  thing.  And 
again  "Yes,"  because  even  true  forms  of  words  lose 


230     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

the  grip  of  reality  on  men.  The  miracle  of  the  Bible  is 
that  here  are  forms  of  words  that  never  lose  their  grip. 
But  take  even  the  best  of  our  creedal  statements  and 
there  is  not  one  of  us  who  can  preach  those  very  words 
to-day.  The  words  themselves  have  shifted  their  sig- 
nificances and  demand  a  new  interpretation. 

But  these  are  general  considerations.  In  the  theme  as 
it  is  proposed  it  is  obviously  assumed  that  there  is  some- 
thing in  the  situation  that  we  are  facing  now  that  raises 
the  question  as  to  the  necessity  of  a  restatement  of  this 
message  to  the  non-Christian  people.  Is  that  new  state- 
ment necessary  because  of  things  peculiar  in  the  condi- 
tions of  this  present  time?  Let  me  summarize  the 
answers  that  have  come  in  this  correspondence  to  which 
I  referred.     "  Yes,"  for  these  reasons : 

First,  because  of  the  great  war.  Let  me  quote  three 
paragraphs  from  these  letters : 

"  A  restatement  of  the  Christian  message  is  needed  in 
Christian  lands,  let  alone  the  necessity  for  it  in  the  ap- 
proach to  non-Christian  lands.  This  appears  necessary 
because  of  the  new  day  in  which  we  are  living.  War 
has  carried  us  across  the  border  line  of  one  great  era  in 
human  life  into  another  great  era.  There  has  been  a 
preparation  of  the  heart  and  soul  life  of  the  peoples  in 
Christian  lands  by  the  experience  of  the  war  which  calls 
for  a  new  statement  of  the  Christian  faith ;  religious  in- 
difference and  atheism  have  disappeared  in  large  sections 
of  our  people.  The  personal,  moral,  and  spiritual  life  of 
men  has  been  enriched  by  a  new  experience.  A  great 
new  symbolism,  expressive  of  sacrifice,  loyalty,  and  obe- 
dience to  high  moral  and  ethical  ideals  and  of  service  of 
a  highly  Christian  character  has  become  ours." 

Another  writes : 

"  I  am  not  one  of  those  whose  conception  of  Chris- 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    231 

tianity  or  whose  conception  of  the  missionary  program 
of  Christian  missions  has  come  through  this  war  without 
very  much  modification.  To  summarize  some  of  the 
impressions  which  the  war  has  made  upon  my  previous 
missionary  conception,  I  will  say  the  war  has  made  me 
feel  that  the  Christian  message  to  non-Christian  nations 
must  be  a  broader  message  in  its  scope  and  application 
than  it  was  before  the  war.  Undoubtedly  our  conception 
of  the  Christian  message  has  been  very  greatly  individ- 
ualistic. The  war  has  emphasized  the  necessity  of  en- 
throning Christian  principles  in  the  life  of  society  and  in 
the  life  of  the  nation." 

And  a  third : 

"  The  war  has  made  great  changes  at  home  and  abroad 
which  have  affected  the  economic,  social,  and  moral  con- 
ditions among  the  nations,  both  of  the  East  and  of  the 
West;  yet  all  these  changes  are  in  some  sense  superficial 
and  not  fundamental.  They  seem  to  me  like  the  waves 
of  a  storm  which  may  rise  mountain  high,  but  leave  the 
depths  of  the  ocean  undisturbed  and  do  not  interfere 
with  or  divert  by  one  hair's  breadth  the  tides  of  the  Gulf 
Stream.  What  I  mean  is  this,  that  the  character  of  the 
missionary  problem  remains  exactly  what  it  was  before 
the  war,  because  human  character  has  not  changed;  nor 
the  character  of  God.  We  have  the  same  message  and 
the  same  message  is  needed." 

But  the  friend  who  writes  these  words  is  illustrating  in 
his  own  life  new  and  vivid  forms  in  which  in  this  day 
that  old  message  needs  to  be  recast. 

"  Yes,"  in  the  second  place,  because  of  the  very  nature 
of  language.  There  is  not  a  missionary  who  has  not  al- 
ready restated  the  Gospel  by  virtue  of  the  necessity  under 
which  he  was  of  phrasing  that  Gospel  in  a  different 
vernacular  from  that  in  which  he  received  it  and  in  which 
all  of  his  previous  religious  experience  had  been  de- 
scribed.   And  whether  abroad  or  here,  the  very  necessities 


232     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

of  language  oblige  us  constantly  to  vary  the  words  in 
which  the  old  message  shall  be  expressed.  For  language 
is  not  a  permanent  and  unchanging  thing.  As  Justice 
Holmes  said  in  a  judgment  of  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  in  1918,  "  A  word  is  not  a  crystal,  transparent  and 
unchanged.  It  is  the  succession  of  a  living  thought  and 
may  vary  greatly  in  colour  and  content  according  to  the 
circumstances  and  the  time  in  which  it  was  used."  The 
singular  thing  about  human  language  is  that  it  perpetually 
contracts.  It  starts  out  as  a  great  living  metaphor,  and 
little  by  little  the  metaphor  dies  out,  until  at  last,  when 
the  metaphor  is  all  gone,  the  language  becomes  capable 
of  dead  and  rigid,  that  is,  of  strictly  scientific,  use.  But 
when  the  language  was  first  used,  the  living,  breathing 
metaphor  was  all  there.  If  men  cling  to  the  old  speech 
when  the  life  has  gone  out  of  it  they  are  not  stating  the 
message  in  the  terms  in  which  it  was  stated  when  that 
language  was  all  alive. 

In  the  third  place,  it  is  necessary  because,  while  lan- 
guage is  a  steadily  contracting  thing,  the  perception  of 
truth  is  an  ever  expanding  thing.  We  cast  the  truth  in 
certain  words  in  one  day.  The  next  day  those  words 
mean  less  than  they  did  the  day  before,  and  that  truth 
has  grown  to  be  seen  to  be  a  bigger  thing.  As  years  go 
by  truth  lays  hold  upon  us  with  greater  grasp.  Truth  it- 
self becomes  a  bigger  and  richer  thing  to  us  and  new 
forms  must  be  found  to  contain  the  larger  substance  that 
we  have  won. 

In  the  fourth  place,  the  restatement  is  necessary  be- 
cause the  elements  essential  to  it,  and  demanding  it,  are 
found  about  us  now  on  every  side.  There  are  new 
understandings,  new  sacrifices,  the  new  light  in  which 
the  cross  of  Christ  stands  out  in  its  principle  of  abandon- 
ment, its  principle  of  surrender,  its  principle  of  atone- 


A  RESTATEMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    233 

ment,  made  vivid  and  real  to  the  world  by  our  own  and 
the  world's  tragic  experiences.  The  shrinking  of  man- 
kind has  given  us  the  world  as  our  term  of  speech,  and 
our  tool  of  work,  and  our  field  of  action.  There  are  new 
conceptions  of  the  solidarity  of  mankind  that  make  the 
ideals  of  St.  Paul  a  possibility  to  our  thought  to-day. 
These  and  innumerable  discoveries  in  the  Spirit  of  God 
through  our  own  experience  have  furnished  us  with 
elements  that  require  to  be  incorporated  now  in  more 
adequate  representation.  The  message  is  the  same  and 
because  the  same  is  new  and  more. 

In  the  fifth  place,  restatement  is  necessary  to-day  be- 
cause at  last  we  are  beginning  to  lay  hold  of  and  to  be 
laid  hold  of  by  what  we  speak  of  as  the  indigenous  prin- 
ciple, the  necessity  of  assimilating  Christianity  to  the 
life  of  the  world,  instead  of  merely  laying  it  down  upon^ 
that  life  from  some  alien  influence  without.  It  is  put  in 
the  words  of  the  president  of  one  of  our  oldest  missionary 
organizations : 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  the  question  as  it  has  been 
phrased  for  you  was  intended  to  refer  only  to  doctrine 
or  not.  From  my  own  point  of  view,  I  should  assume  that 
it  was  not,  that  it  covered  many  other  questions  besides. 
In  my  own  view,  assimilation  of  Christianity  in  the  in- 
digenous churches  in  non-Christian  lands  involves  re- 
statement of  almost  everything.  We  are  certainly  aware 
how  largely  the  statements  of  doctrine  which  have  been 
current  among  us  bear  the  marks  of  the  history  of 
thought  which  has  been  indeed  the  history  of  our  ex- 
perience, but  has  not  been  the  history  of  thought  of 
other  races.  It  seems  to  me  therefore  quite  axiomatic  that 
the  Christian  doctrine  be  restated  by  these  other  nations 
themselves  as  they  come  toward  maturity,  and  that  that 
process  should  be  aided  by  our  attempt  to  restate  Chris- 
tian doctrines  for  their  benefit  in  so  far  as  we  have  the 
sympathy  and  insight  which  are  necessary  to  the  work. 


234     THE  GOSPEL  AKD  THE  NEW  WORLD 

And  this  remark  is  equally  true  of  matters  pertaining  to 
organization  and  ritual  and  the  application  of  Christianity 
to  conduct  and  life." 

In  the  sixth  place,  this  restatement  is  necessary  be- 
cause of  the  new  heresies  that  we  confront  to-day.    What 
are  the  past  creedal  statements  of  the  Church  but  the 
effort  to  safeguard  the  content  of  the  Gospel  against 
contemporaneous  heresy?     Those  statements  are  valid 
I  still  wherever  contemporaneous  heresy  is  what  it  was 
jwhen  those  creeds  were  formulated.    But  we  are  facing 
i;new  heresies  to-day  that  men  never  dreamed  of  in  the 
I  old  years  of  long  ago,  and  our  Gospel  must  be  restated 
ISO  as  to  protect  its  content  against  the  actual  heresies  of 
'our  own  time. 

And  only  once  more  it  is  necessary  because  we  have 
come  to  realize  afresh  the  living  presence  of  God  in  his- 
tory. We  have  seen  Him  in  the  watchfires  of  a  thousand 
circling  camps.  We  have  heard  the  thunder  of  His  judg- 
ments on  the  land  and  sea.  We  see  the  unfolding  of  His 
will  in  all  the  current  history  of  mankind.  We  have  to 
state  the  Gospel  in  the  terms  of  our  living  experience  of 
God  to-day,  in  a  new  understanding  of  what  revelation 
means,  of  eternal  truth  made  available  for  men.  That 
means  eternal  reality  cast  in  terms  of  time  and  space,  the 
terms  contemporary  to  the  mankind  to  whom  the  revela- 
tion is  to  be  made  a  living  and  real  thing. 

One  might  fill  a  volume  in  amplifying  these  things  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking.  I  have  picked  out  of  this 
correspondence  only  seven  of  the  great  grounds  on  which 
it  is  indispensable  to-day  that  we  should  restudy  the  state- 
ment of  our  Christian  message  to  the  non-Christian  world. 
But  wherein,  we  must  ask  ourselves — the  question 
surely  means  to  carry  us  on  to  this — wherein  and  how  is 
this  restatement  to  be  made,  what  are  the  forms  of  it, 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    236 

and  the  notes  to  be  struck  in  it?    First  of  all,  it  is  to  be  \ 
made  by  a  return  to  the  ideas,  to  the  living  idioms,  to  the    ' 
experience  of  the  New  Testament.    There  are  many  men 
to-day  who  have  been  telling  us  that  we  need  to  get  back 
to  Christ,  by  which  they  mean  that  we  must  slough  off  all 
of  the  New  Testament,  except  the  Gospels,  and  all  of  the 
Gospels  except  the  words  of  Jesus.     Our  understanding 
is  different  from  this.     We  believe  that  our  great  need  ,t 
to-day  is  to  get  back  to  the  whole  of  the  New  Testament .  I 
representation  of  the  Christian  Gospel,  and  that  our  re-  ! 
statements  will  be  found  in  reality  to  be  only  rediscoveries  !■ 
of  what  we  had  missed  in  our  previous  readings  of  our  f 
New  Testament. 

Let  me  quote  from  two  letters,  one  from  one  of  the 
leading  missionaries  in  Japan : 


"  In  our  Western  Christianity  metaphysical  and  philo- 
sophical discussions  have  occupied  so  large  a  place  as  to 
give  our  conception  of  it  a  twist,  and  our  presentation  of 
it  a  form,  which  do  not  naturally  appeal  to  the  Oriental 
mind.  The  Gospel  considered  as  a  system  of  Divine 
Metaphysics,  or  as  a  plan  of  salvation  whereby  the  indi- 
vidual soul  is  enabled  to  get  to  heaven,  has  never  been 
enthusiastically  received  by  them.  Whereas  the  Gospel 
considered  as  the  power  of  God  to  create  new  personality, 
to  reform  bad  social  custom,  and  to  produce  ideal  national 
institutions  at  once  awakens  sincere  and  hearty  response. 

"  There  is  need,  therefore,  in  presenting  the  Gospel  to 
non-Christian  nations  that  it  first  be  delivered  from  its 
Western  philosophic  mould,  and  be  offered  in  the  sim- 
plicity with  which  Jesus  Himself  taught  it,  and  for  the 
purpose  He  had  in  view,  viz.,  to  establish  the  conditions  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  In  other  words,  the  Gospel 
message  must  be  made  more  practical  and  distinctly  social 
in  all  its  outlook  and  operation." 

One  more  letter  from  one  of  the  leading  younger  mis- 


236     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

sionaries  in  China,  a  man  from  whom  jve  are  going  to 
hear  much  in  the  coming  years : 

"  The  restatement  of  the  Christian  message,  if  it  can 
make  vivid  those  things  which  are  dear  to  life  and 
awaken  the  lagging  interest  of  sinful  men,  is  a  thing 
much  to  be  desired.  A  closer  approximation  to  the 
Biblical  forms  and  figures  properly  interpreted  will,  I 
think,  produce  such  a  restatement.  It  surely  is  a  signifi- 
cant thing  that  for  simplicity,  perspicacity,  and  general 
utility  the  Biblical  forms  and  figures  seem  peculiarly 
adapted  to  all  nations.  They  are  easy  to  grasp.  As  far 
as  I  am  aware,  there  is  no  special  difficulty  in  China  with 
Biblical  expressions  and  symbols  as  such.  The  difficulties 
such  as  there  are  have  more  to  do  with  the  idea  than  with 
the  form  of  the  expression.  Christianity  has  brought 
many  absolutely  new  ideas  to  China,  and  naturally  there 
is  difficulty  in  grasping  these  ideas.  The  difficulty  would 
not  disappear,  however,  upon  the  changing  of  the  form; 
rather,  it  would  grow  larger,  for  if  the  form  were  changed 
before  the  idea  was  properly  conveyed,  there  would  be 
great  danger  of  losing  both  form  and  content  at  the  same 
time.  For  example,  if  one  tried  to  explain  the  meaning 
of  sacrifice  as  it  is  found  in  the  Christian  faith,  Chinese 
forms  could  not  help  him  at  all,  and  the  right  idea  could 
not  be  conveyed.  I  think  the  general  principle  is  a  sound 
one,  that  the  Christian  message  stands  in  need  of  re- 
statement in  proportion  to  its  distance  from  the  New 
Testament." 

First  of  all,  accordingly,  we  need  to  restate  our  Chris- 
tian message  in  a  new  discovery  and  a  larger  loyalty  to 
the  New  Testament,  and  second,  thereby  we  need  to  do 
it  with  a  new  and  clearer  apprehension  of  right  emphasis 
"and  proportion.     For  the  New  Testament  does  not  lay  its  | 
emphasis  on  metaphysical  theory,  it  lays  it  on  super^  i 
natural    life.     The    New   Testament    does   not    lay   its  ' 
emphasis  absolutely,  as  we  have  too  often  done,  on  one 
aspect  of  the  application  of  the  Gospel  to  humanity, 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    237 

through  the  individual.  The  New  Testament  recognizes 
as  clearly  the  solidarity  of  mankind.  Its  great  conception 
of  humanity  is  of  a  body  in  which  every  different  section 
of  mankind  possesses  membership,  a  body  with  a  common 
life,  of  which  Jesus  Christ  is  the  head.  We  are  only  be- 
ginning to-day  to  feel  our  way  into  the  great  daring  ideals 
and  conceptions  of  the  New  Testament,  and  in  proportion 
as  we  get  into  them,  we  shall  discover  that  what  we  speak 
of  as  the  social  restatement  of  the  Gospel,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  a  true  statement,  is  only  a  return  to  the  New  Testament 
ideal  of  the  collective  body.  If  the  solidarity  of  man- 
kind, if  the  reality  of  the  collective  principle  and  the 
communal  spirit — and  was  there  ever  a  day  better  fitted 
for  the  rediscovery  of  that  principle  than  this? — were 
realized  and  lived  as  well  as  restated,  what  would  happen  ? 
What  do  we  see  in  national  unity  to-day,  in  the  power  of 
great  armies  to  gather  up  men,  and  to  supply  vicariously 
the  courage  of  the  body  to  the  individual ;  what  have  we 
seen  in  all  this  but  a  shadowing  forth  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment ideals  of  the  Christian  Church,  and  the  unity  of 
mankind,  and  the  reality  of  the  collective  application  of 
the  redemption  of  Christ  to  human  solidarity? 

We  will  find  in  this  return  to  the  New  Testament  not 
only  this  rearrangement  of  emphasis  and  proportion,  we 
will  discover  also  the  presence  in  the  New  Testament  of 
what  has  often  been  apologized  for  by  us,  but  what  we 
know  to  lie  at  the  very  root  of  all  human  progress,  the 
recognition  of  the  principle  of  nationality.  "  My  heart's 
desire  and  prayer  is  for  Israel."  There  is  the  national 
conception.  It  dominated  the  Old  Testament.  It  was 
not  destroyed  in  the  New.  And  just  as  in  proportion  as 
you  perfect  the  family  life,  do  you  contribute  the  units 
that  make  possible  the  perfection  of  national  personality, 
just  so  as  you  perfect  national  life,  do  you  make  possible 


238      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

a  real  and  effective  international  society.  And  we  know 
the  new  power  that  the  Gospel  has  had  in  China  with  this 
rediscovery.  I  am  aware  that  one  of  our  great  dangers 
is  the  peril  of  the  national  proclamation  of  Christian  truth. 
What  is  the  history  of  Europe  but  the  story  and  picture 
of  the  peril  and  danger  of  it?  But  the  peril  and  danger 
do  not  absolve  us  from  the  duty  of  dealing  with  the  task. 
And  in  proportion  as  we  go  back  to  the  New  Testament, 
we  shall  get  not  only  our  individual  message  made  clear 
and  distinct,  but  our  social  message  will  be  affirmed,  and 
set  in  right  relationship,  and  we  shall  have  a  new  national 
word  to  speak  to  the  peoples  that  will  kindle  enthusiasm 
in  hearts  that  have  been  cold  to  the  statement  that  we 
have  made  to  them  in  the  past. 

Yet  once  more,  we  need  to  make  this  restatement  by 
gathering  up  all  the  wealth  and  truth  that  is  lying  around 
about  us  now  ready  for  our  use.  Dr.  Griswold  of  India 
has  written  a  valuable  paper  entitled  "  Non-Christian 
Rites  and  Their  Christian  Equivalents,"  and  the  idea  of 
the  paper  suggests  the  line  of  thought  I  have  in  mind. 
All  across  the  world  there  are  these  feelings  of  men  after 
what  will  satisfy  the  deep  need  of  their  souls.  The  desires 
are  there  that  Christ  came  to  satisfy.  It  has  been  dif- 
ficult for  us  to  bring  ourselves  to  Christ's  point  of  view 
in  the  matter,  difficult  for  us  to  win  the  courage  and  the 
daring  of  Paul,  but  who  can  read  Paul's  epistles  wdth  any 
knowledge  whatever  of  the  contemporary  thought  in  the 
midst  of  which  he  lived  without  seeing  how  he  made 
everything  tributary  to  his  statement  of  the  Gospel,  how 
he  laid  hold  on  every  point  of  contact  round  about  him, 
and  wherever  he  saw  a  little  flicker  of  light  tried  to  make 
the  soul  that  nursed  that  flicker  realize  that  in  Jesus 
Christ  that  little  flame  found  its  fulfillment.  In  the  blaze  of 
the  perfect  day,  in  the  Light  of  all  the  world? 


A  EESTATEMEKT  OF  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE    239 

In  the  fourth  place,  such  statements  need  to  be  made — 
and  I  have  misgivings  at  times  as  to  whether  everything 
else  ought  not  to  be  left  out  and  this  one  thing  alone 
stressed — such  statements  need  to  be  made  as  will  recog- 
nize that  what  we  want  now  and  ever  is  not  the  form  of 
words  so  much  as  the  living,  loving,  thrilling,  resistless 
power  behind  those  words,  living  in  those  words,  uttered 
through  those  words.  I  am  thinking  of  the  appeal  of  life 
and  to  life.  Let  me  quote  a  letter  from  one  of  the 
younger  men  in  another  section  of  China,  one  of  the  half 
dozen  coming  leaders  of  the  Christian  body  in  the  great 
republic  of  China.  He  is  speaking  of  it  as  the  last  point 
in  his  reply. 

"  In  the  fourth  place,  too  much  emphasis  cannot  be  put 
upon  the  predominant  part  which  the  lives  of  the  mis- 
sionaries themselves  have  in  carrying  the  Gospel  into  new 
fields.  Corruption  and  evil  are  only  too  evident  all  about 
one.  The  salt  must  not  lose  its  savour  if  it  is  to  preserve 
and  heal.  There  is  much  to  lower  the  morale  of  any 
missionary ;  the  separation  from  the  home-land  and  from 
all  that  America  stands  for;  the  loneliness  and  depression 
which  inevitably  come  from  being  surrounded  by  a  people 
whose  civilization  is  a  century  behind  ours,  whose  stand- 
ards of  life  are  largely  untouched  by  the  purifying  power 
of  Christian  thought  and  example ;  the  narrowness  of  the 
daily  outlook,  where  companions  and  outside  interests  are 
few  in  number ;  the  trying  climate  and  conditions  of  living 
in  an  Oriental  land  that  so  often  brings  illness  which  must 
be  endured  without  the  usual  medical  care, — all  these 
things  tend  to  bring  discouragement.  Problems  begin  to 
look  insurmountable ;  small  differences  of  opinion  tend  to 
develop  and  to  threaten  friendship ;  every-day  temptations 
are  increasingly  difficult  to  overcome.  There  is  a  great 
need  for  the  actual  incarnation  of  Christ's  spirit  in  His 
disciples,  of  the  warming  and  revivifying  influence  that 
can  come  only  from  the  Divine  Source.  We  do  not  need 
so  much  the  *  restatement  of  the  Christian  message '  as 


240      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

we  do  a  reincarnation  of  Christ's  spirit  in  the  messengers. 
New  methods  of  approach,  or  emphasis  upon  these  pre- 
paratory steps,  are  useless  unless  the  ultimate  reality  of 
actual  experience  of  Christ's  power  and  presence  is  the 
goal.  And  there  is  encouragement  in  the  fact  that  re- 
sponse to  this  Christian  reality  will  always  come." 

There  is  the  need  above  all  of  the  utterance  by  life  to 
life,  of  the  yearning  of  love,  of  the  wooing  of  the  cross, 
of  the  dynamic  of  the  supernatural  ethics  of  that  cross, 
the  subtle  call  of  the  mysticism  of  the  invisible  fellowship. 
I  received  a  large  package  of  papers  from  our  friend, 
Howard  Walter,  the  very  week  that  the  cablegram  an- 
nouncing his  death  was  received,  and  they  were  all  in 
reality  an  appeal  for  the  restatement  of  our  Christian 
message  in  more  unflinching  mystical  terms  to  the  non- 
Christian  world,  and  especially  to  the  great  groups  of 
questioning  spirits  whom  he  was  meeting  among  the 
Mohammedan  peoples  of  the  Punjab,  who  had  been 
touched  by  the  Sufi  influence.  Far  more  than  any  mere 
tinkering  with  the  language,  we  need  the  incarnation  of 
the  reality  in  men's  lives,  the  reality  which  is  felt  by  men 
and  lived  by  men,  which  will  utter  itself  in  words  that 
carry  their  piercing  and  healing  significance  to  men's 
souls. 

I  was  reading  recently,  in  the  second  volume  of  the  life 
of  Bishop  Westcott,  the  tribute  that  Canon  Scott  Holland 
paid  in  The  Commonwealth  to  Westcott's  social  influence, 
and  to  all  that  he  and  his  friends  had  owed  to  him.  This 
is  what  he  wrote : 

"The  real  and  vital  impression  made  came  from  the 
intensity  of  the  spiritual  passion  which  forced  its  way  out 
through  that  strangely  knotted  brow,  and  lit  up  those 
wonderful  gray  eyes,  and  shook  that  thin  high  voice  into 
some  ringing  clang  as  of  a  trumpet.    There  was  a  famous 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    241 

address  at  the  founding  of  the  Christian  Social  Union,  de- 
livered to  us  in  Sion  College,  which  none  who  were  pres- 
ent can  ever  forget.  Yet  none  of  us  can  ever  recall  in 
the  least  what  was  said.  No  one  knows.  Only  we  know 
that  we  were  lifted,  kindled,  transformed.  We  pledged 
ourselves ;  we  committed  ourselves ;  we  were  ready  to  die 
for  the  Cause ;  but  if  you  asked  us  why,  and  for  what,  we 
could  not  tell  you.  There  he  was;  there  he  spoke;  the 
prophetic  fire  was  breaking  from  him;  the  martyr-spirit 
glowed  through  him.  We,  too,  were  caught  up.  But 
words  had  only  become  symbols.  There  was  nothing 
verbal  to  report  or  to  repeat.  We  could  remember  noth- 
ing except  the  spirit  which  was  in  the  words;  and  that 
was  enough." 

Not  one  of  them  could  remember  a  single  word  that 
Westcott  had  spoken,  not  one  of  them  could  recall  a  single 
thought  to  which  he  had  given  utterance  in  that  address, 
but  every  one  of  them  traced  back  to  it  transforming  in- 
fluences. They  were  carefully  chosen  words,  as  we  may 
know.  And  the  thought  was  no  reckless  and  unguarded 
thought.  But  what  had  left  its  impress  and  gone  home 
was  neither  the  word  nor  the  thought,  but  something 
deeper  than  both — a  life  in  him  that  found  the  life  in 
them. 

And  yet  once  more  this  message  must  be  restated  in 
terms  of  unity,  not  in  terms  of  our  differentials.  Our 
message  to  the  non-Christian  world  must  to-day  be 
brought  resolutely  under  the  category  of  our  agreements, 
of  our  united  Christian  faith.  We  play  false  with  Christ, 
we  play  false  with  the  world  to-day  in  so  far  as  we  break 
the  central  unity  of  His  great  message  which  every  one 
of  us  can  affirm  in  the  symbol  of  our  faith  that  we  call 
the  Apostles'  Creed.  In  so  far  as  we  obscure  those  great 
central  convictions  by  secondary  issues  we  misinterpret 
the  message  that  we  are  sent  to  bear  to  the  non-Christian 
world. 


242     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

And  now  one  comfort  about  it  all  is  that  no  one  of  us 
individually  can  restate  the  message.  It  is  a  corporate 
task.  In  the  past  the  statement  of  the  Gospel  has  been 
adequate  only  in  proportion  as  there  has  been  an  adequate 
corporate  statement  of  it.  It  can  only  be  stated  ade- 
quately by  our  collective  witness  to-day.  There  will  be 
room  in  the  mission  field,  thank  God,  for  those  men  who 
see  the  truth  in  many  different  ways.  One  great  Chris- 
tian experience  will  be  dominant  in  this  life,  and  another 
in  that  life.  There  is  room  for  all  of  us  there,  and  if 
only  we  be  obedient  to  the  One  Great  Spirit  and  docile  to 
the  One  Great  Head,  the  Lord  of  us  all  will  make  sure 
that  our  united  deliverance  adequately  represents  Him. 

And  I  am  not  one  of  those  who  believe  that  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  is  the  only  voice  by  which  the  revela- 
tion is  coming  to  the  world.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
Christian  Church  is  the  only  institute  of  religion  in  the 
United  States.  I  conceive  the  state  and  the  family  to  be 
as  truly  divine  as  the  Church,  and  if  two  of  the  three  were 
to  be  dispensed  with,  the  Church  would  not  be  the  last. 
We  read  of  that  Heavenly  City  that  will  some  day  come 
from  God  out  of  Heaven,  and  there  will  be  a  family  and 
a  state,  a  King  and  a  Father,  and  there  will  be  children 
there.  But,  as  has  been  said,  John  saw  no  temple  therein. 
There  are  more  forces  working  in  the  world  than  those 
we  think  of  as  contained  in  the  distinctive  missionary 
enterprise  which  we  carry  forward.  We  believe  it  is 
central,  we  believe  it  bears  the  message  in  greatest  purity, 
we  believe  that  without  it  all  else  is  dead,  but  thank  God, 
He  works  with  greater  wealth  than  we  command,  and  He 
has  forces  operating  in  the  world  to  fulfill  His  ends  be- 
yond those  that  we  control  and  they  too  help  to  speak 
His  word. 

And  now  there  is  room  for  but  a  brief  reference  to  the 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    243 

second  aspect  of  this  theme — whether  a  reinterpretation 
of  the  missionary  objective  is  necessary  in  the  Church  at 
home.  The  theme  does  not  speak  of  a  restatement  of 
the  missionary  appeal  or  a  reinterpretation  of  the  mis- 
sionary motive.  It  speaks  of  a  reinterpretation  of  the 
missionary  objective.     Is  that  necessary  at  home  ? 

Well,  there  is  no  space  for  any  comparison  of  what  we 
conceive  to  be  the  missionary  objective  now  with  what 
men  conceived  it  one  or  two  or  three  generations  ago. 
And  I  believe  that  a  great  many  of  our  ordinary  judg- 
ments on  this  subject  are  wrong,  because  we  do  not  ade- 
quately apprehend  what  was  the  missionary  objective  as 
men  conceived  it  one  and  two,  or  three  generations  ago. 
Perhaps  every  supposed  novel  restatement  of  that  ob- 
jective which  we  hear  to-day  one  might  undertake  to 
match  out  of  missionary  literature,  thirty,  fifty,  seventy- 
five  years  old.  All  that  we  can  here  do  is  to  state  simply 
and  constructively  what  are  to  be  the  notes  and  the  order 
in  which  those  notes  are  to  be  struck,  as  we  speak  of  the 
missionary  objective  of  our  own  times. 

First  of  all,  our  objective  is  to  preach  Jesus  Christ  to 
persons  and  to  the  world  as  the  Saviour  of  men  from  sin 
and  unto  life.  And  if  men  are  contemplating  any  reinter- 
pretation of  the  missionary  objective  to  the  Church  that 
leaves  out  that  objective  or  that  sets  it  elsewhere  than  in 
the  first  place,  the  missionary  undertakings  of  our  evan- 
gelical churches  will  define  their  objectives  otherwise  for 
thernselves.  We  set  in  the  first  place  unqualifiedly,  to  be 
dominant  over  everything  else,  that  the  objective  of  the 
missionary  enterprise  is  to  make  Jesus  Christ  known  as 
the  Saviour  of  men  from  sin  and  unto  a  divine  life. 

Second,  it  is  to  diffuse  the  Gospel  as  light  amid  the 
darkness  of  the  society  of  the  world;  that  by  its  gradual 
illumination  it  may  drive  out  the  night  and  bring  with  it 


244     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

the  health  and  healing  that  come  with  the  wholesomeness 
of  the  day. 

Third,  it  is  the  use  of  the  power  of  the  Gospel  by  its 
principles  and  life  to  change  not  only  individuals  and 
human  society,  but  national  personalities.  Let  me  quote 
from  another  letter : 


"  In  a  somewhat  similar  fashion  there  must  be  a  re- 
statement of  the  Missionary  Program  for  the  Church  at 
home.  If  our  aim  is,  frankly,  to  usher  in  the  Kingdom  of 
God  in  non-Christian  lands,  then  we  must  recognize  all 
the  forces  that  are  used  of  God,  and  that  must  be  used, 
in  order  to  accomplish  that  end.  Now  many  of  us  have 
in  a  somewhat  smug  and  provincial  fashion  regarded  the 
Missionary  Movement  as  the  only  agency  through  which 
God  was  accomplishing  His  purposes  in  humanity.  We 
have  argued  for  our  program  on  the  ground  that  if  it  were 
actually  carried  out  everything  would  be  included,  and 
we  have  defined  our  program  very  largely  in  terms  of  the 
presentation  and  the  heralding  of  the  Gospel  to  the  in- 
dividual. Nevertheless,  Germany  is  an  illustration  of 
the  inadequacy  of  such  a  definition.  Here  was  a  great 
country  where  the  Bible  was  really  acceptable  to  the 
people;  where  the  Church  was  established  as  an  institu- 
tion; where  there  were  enough  people  genuinely  evan- 
gelized to  become  radiating  centers  for  the  Gospel 
throughout  the  entire  country.  In  other  words,  Germany 
was  a  country  that  was  evangelized  as  fully  as  our  ambi- 
tions for  the  evangelization  of  lands  now  non-Christian 
would  require.  Nevertheless  Germany  was  the  cause  of 
a  great  World  Tragedy." 


Here  we  go  beyond  the  distinctive  foreign  missionary 
responsibility,  however.  No  nation  is  wholly  Christian, 
and  if  Foreign  Missions  are  responsible  for  making  them 
so  then,  it  may  be  asked.  What  fields  are  not  foreign 
mission  fields  ?    Foreign  Missions  are  not  the  only  Chris- 


A  EESTATEMEKT  OF  CHEISTIAN  MESSAGE    245 

tianizing  agency.  Their  duty  is  to  begin  the  work. 
Other  forces  are  to  end  it.  But  the  end  must  be  fore- 
seen and  aimed  at  in  the  beginning. 

In  the  fourth  place,  it  is  to  exercise  the  ministry  of 
Christian  internationalism  upon  the  great  problems  of  the 
present  time,  supplying  the  ideals  on  which  alone  a  world 
society  ever  can  be  set  up,  and  what  is  more  difficult  still, 
contributing  the  spirit  of  confidence  and  trust  and  the 
emancipation  from  suspicion  without  which  no  League 
of  Nations  can  come  into  existence,  or  if  it  comes  into 
existence,  can  survive. 

In  the  fifth  place,  to  demand  the  fulfillment  of  their 
missionary  obligation  by  national  societies.  Never  can 
we  complete  the  task  set  forth  for  the  Christian  Church 
to  do  throughout  the  world  as  long  as  that  task  is 
frustrated  by  the  influence  of  nominally  Christian  nations. 

As  one  of  these  correspondents  says : 

"  It  is  well  known  that  the  non-Christian  nations  are 
always  more  affected  by  example  than  by  precept,  and  it 
can  hardly  be  questioned  that  in  the  present  emergency 
the  most  powerful  restatement  of  the  Gospel  message 
that  could  be  made  to  the  non-Christian  people  would  be 
that  the  Christian  nations  practice  it  themselves.  The 
words  of  our  Christian  President  have  gone  out  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth  as  an  awakening  evangel,  and  if  the 
ideals  which  he  has  advocated,  or,  better  still,  if  all  the 
ideals  which  Jesus  Christ  advocated  could  be  exemplified 
nationally  and  internationally  by  Christian  nations,  the 
message  of  the  Gospel  would  be  invincible  in  every  land 
where  the  Gospel  is  proclaimed. 

"  In  other  words,  while  the  present  crisis  calls  for  a 
restatement  in  words  of  the  Gospel  message  to  non-Chris- 
tian nations,  it  calls  with  even  greater  insistence,  and  as 
an  essential  preliminary,  that  the  principles  of  the  King- 
dom of  God  forming  the  basis  of  that  message  should  be 
actually  realized  among  us,  and  should  be  manifested  in 


246      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

all  the  outgoings  of  our  national  life.  Only  thus  can  we 
expect  our  message  to  be  fully  understood  and  believed 
by  the  people  that  make  up  those  non-Christian  nations." 

In  the  sixth  place,  we  must  set  clear  among  our  reinter- 
pretations  of  the  objective  the  heroic  and  the  courageous 
and  the  sacrificial  principle.  In  so  far  as  our  missionary 
enterprise  has  gone  down  to  any  other  level  than  that, 
it  has  been  untrue  to  its  origins  and  has  only  sowed  the 
seeds  of  its  own  impotence  and  decline.  The  missionary 
enterprise  grew  out  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  God,  it 
went  out  through  the  world  asking  men  who  were  to  bear 
the  message  that  they  should  give  everything,  never  turn- 
ing back,  counting  no  price,  deeming  every  human  rela- 
tionship secondaiy  in  comparison  with  that  central  claim, 
and  thereby  glorifying  in  that  claim  every  human  tie. 
To-day,  once  again,  we  have  been  called  back  by  all  that 
we  have  seen  and  suffered  to  realize  that  only  as  we  keep 
this  enterprise  on  this  plane  will  it  be  true  and  strong  and 
hold  the  secret  of  convincing  appeal  to  the  hearts  of  the 
young  men  and  the  young  women  of  our  time. 

One  has  many  searchings  of  conscience  in  this  matter, 
in  practical  things,  day  by  day,  in  what  we  spend  upon 
our  food,  in  what  we  spend  upon  our  comforts,  in  our 
own  personal  tastes  and  pleasures,  and  relationships. 
One  has  many  searchings  of  conscience  in  these  things, 
and  one  longs  again  for  the  return  of  the  heroic  days. 
They  came  back  for  a  little  while  in  the  war.  It  was  then 
for  the  soldier  no  question  of  salary,  of  terms  of  employ- 
ment, of  comforts  of  living,  it  was  then  no  question  of 
such  things  in  these  days  that  have  just  gone  by.  We 
must  recast  the  missionary  enterprise  and  its  appeal  in 
terms  as  exacting  and  as  sacrificing  as  those,  in  terms 
that  ask  men  for  absolutely  everything,  if  we  wish  to 
keep  it  true  and  powerful  still. 


A  RESTATEMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE    247 

And  last  of  all,  we  must  go  out  in  this  new  day  with 
a  more  aggressive  dauntlessness  in  the  assertion  of  the 
missionary  obligation.  We  never  had  any  ground  for 
making  apologies  for  it.  If  we  ever  thought  we  had,  that 
thought  is  baseless  to-day.  One  of  our  correspondents 
writes : 


"  I  believe  we  can  now  restate  the  program  in  three 
aspects  in  a  way  which  would  be  new  to  most  in  the 
Church. 

"  I.  As  to  its  naturalness.  Heretofore,  it  has  been 
counted  an  unnatural  thing  to  have  a  world-wide  concern 
or  to  feel  a  world-wide  responsibility.  It  should  be  pos- 
sible now  to  state  in  new  and  fresh  terms  that  the  mis- 
sionary program  is  native  (a)  to  the  nature  of  Christi- 
anity, and  (b)  to  the  nature  of  the  race.  There  is  a 
wide-spread  feeling  that  the  churches  of  Christendom 
mean  by  bulk  of  forces  to  propagate  Christianity.  We 
can  now  point  out  that  this  is  not  our  design.  The  whole 
method  of  international  cooperation  has  made  the  pro- 
posal of  evangelization  by  native  effort  wholly  natural. 
As  the  Roman  Empire  made  natural  the  conception  of  a 
world-wide  force  which  should  yet  leave  large  native 
freedom,  and  so  prepared  the  way  of  the  Christian  con- 
ception, so  this  recent  world  movement  and  world  co- 
operation prepares  the  way  for  a  new  outlook  on  the 
naturalness  of  the  missionary  program.  Any  minister 
who  speaks  haltingly  about  the  missionary  program  in 
•these  days  reveals  that  he  has  missed  this  new-world 
conception  of  it. 

"  II.  As  to  its  possibility.  Multitudes  in  the  Church 
have  always  thought  of  the  missionary  program  as  a 
beautiful  dream  of  a  few  idealists  who  never  discussed 
among  themselves  rationally  the  feasibility  of  their  plan. 
Within  five  years  I  have  had  an  active  Christian  point 
out  to  me  that  neither  in  men  nor  in  money  was  this  pro- 
posal feasible.  The  impossibility  was  urged  also  on  the 
ground  of  essential  antagonism  between  the  nations,  the 
ideals  of  one  nation  conflicting  hopelessly  with  those  of 


248     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

another,  etc.  Of  course  the  program  can  now  be  re- 
worded in  very  daring  terms.  We  have  found  that  when 
heart  enough  is  put  into  any  program,  there  are  money 
and  men  enough  for  it.  Ministers  will  find  that  congre- 
gations are  thinking  in  terms  of  the  other  side  of  the 
world  as  they  never  did  before,  and  while  there  will  be 
nothing  new  to  the  more  thoughtful  leaders  in  this  accent 
on  the  possibility  of  the  program,  it  will  be  a  revelation 
to  the  people  who  have  been  laboriously  but  hopelessly 
supporting  the  movement. 

"  III.  As  to  its  unity.  Of  course  among  those  of  us 
who  have  observed  carefully  the  work  abroad  there  will 
be  nothing  new  here  except  a  new  application  of  wholly 
familiar  principles,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  the 
Church  at  large  there  are  multitudes  of  people  who  think 
of  the  missionary  program  in  terms  of  their  own  churches. 
There  came  to  my  desk  this  morning  from  one  of  my 
recent  students  an  order  of  a  Thanksgiving  service  which 
he  had  planned,  in  which  all  the  religious  forces  of  the 
community,  including  Catholics  and  Jews,  took  their  part. 
It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  post-war  conditions  will 
make  that  kind  of  thing  possible  at  all  points  but  we  have 
our  opportunity  to  restate  our  missionary  program  in 
similar  terms.  It  will  be  no  more  than  we  have  been  do- 
ing for  years,  but  it  will  be  more  than  the  Church  has  been 
heeding.  The  difficulty  has  been  and  will  still  be  with 
some  of  the  brethren  that  conviction  and  fellowship  seem 
conflictive  to  them.  How  to  carry  one's  deep  convictions 
into  fellowship  with  a  man  of  another  set  of  convictions 
is  difficult  in  private  life.  It  is  even  harder  to  do  in 
ecclesiastical  life.  I  suppose  we  will  run  into  the  same 
snags  but  there  is  a  wider  channel  open  now  than  we  have 
ever  known  before.  We  can  restate  the  missionary  pro- 
gram as  though  it  were  the  one  task  of  the  one  Church, 
and  in  its  name  we  can  challenge  the  churches  to  recog- 
nize themselves  as  the  Church." 


He  ends  with  this  hope  that  by  taking  advantage  of 
this  present  opportunity,  the  Churches,  though  Churches 
still,  might  do  in  the  world  the  work  and  make  upon  the 


A  EESTATEMENT  OF  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE    249 

world  the  impression  of  the  one  Church  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ. 

Maybe  that  is  the  word  with  which  one  might  best  end. 
And  yet  there  is  one  other  word  better  to  end  with  than 
that.  Our  thoughts  of  the  Church  are,  many  of  them, 
tainted  and  incomplete,  and  we  are  perpetually  talking  of 
it  in  language  about  its  bigness,  the  bigness  of  the  appeal 
that  it  can  make,  especially  its  financial  bigness.  Is  that 
a  wholly  true  note?  There  is  nothing  in  bigness  that  is 
going  to  accomplish  our  task  for  us,  or  that  has  kinship 
to  the  little  child  born  in  a  manger  who  had  nowhere  to 
lay  His  head,  who  lived  a  poor  man  and  died  poor,  with 
no  booty  for  His  murderers  except  the  one  white  robe 
which  He  wore.  No,  Jesus  Christ  is  the  word  to  end 
with,  and  the  thought.  In  proportion  as  we  know  Him, 
the  power  of  His  resurrection,  and  the  fellowship  of  His 
suffering,  being  made  conformable  to  His  death ;  in  pro- 
portion as  the  Gospel  that  we  preach  is  not  words  about 
Him,  but  the  Lord  Himself;  in  proportion  as  the  one 
great  objective  that  controls  us  and  that  we  hold  up  be- 
fore men  is  Christ,  in  that  proportion  do  we  work  with 
truth  and  unto  victory. 

I  know  that  this  carries  with  it  its  own  limitations. 
The  world  thinks  that  it  is  bigger  than  Christ.  But 
Christianity  is  the  acceptance  of  the  liberty  and  power 
that  spring  from  the  limitations  of  God  in  the  Incarnation, 
and  of  the  freedom  and  strength  that  flow  from  our 
limitations  in  the  bondage  of  Christ. 


XII 
IDEALS  OF  MISSIONARY  SERVICE 

WHEN  we  reflect  upon  the  ideals  of  missionary 
service  our  minds  almost  inevitably  turn  to 
comparisons  between  the  present  and  what  we 
think  of  as  the  giant  and  heroic  days.  We  pass  in  review 
the  conditions  under  which  missionary  work  had  to  be 
done  then  and  the  conditions  that  environ  us  to-day.  We 
think  of  the  provision  then  and  now  for  the  education  of 
missionary  children,  the  ideals  that  prevailed  then  and 
our  practice  to-day  with  regard  to  the  length  of  the  term 
of  service  and  the  frequency  of  furloughs.  Henry  Venn 
and  Rufus  Anderson  and  Walter  Lowrie  among  the  home 
administrators  stand  out  before  our  minds  and  it  becomes 
almost  impossible  for  us  not  to  fall  into  thoughts  of  com- 
parison between  their  days  and  our  own. 

Now  one  wonders  whether  comparisons  of  this  kind 
are  really  possible.  Surely  they  are  very  difficult  to  make 
with  justice  and  with  truth.  I  attempted  a  little  while 
ago  to  study  in  our  missionary  records  this  matter  of  the 
length  of  term  of  missionary  service,  whether  it  was  true 
that  prior,  say,  to  the  year  i860  the  average  length  of 
missionary  career  was  greater  than  it  has  been  since  i860, 
and  it  proved  to  be  almost  impossible  to  form  any  really 
just  and  trustworthy  judgment  even  on  that  subject.  We 
know  our  term  of  comparison,  but  we  do  not  know  ade- 
quately, and  I  do  not  suppose  we  ever  can  recall  the  other 
term.     Furthermore,  even  if  we  could  make  the  compari- 

250 


IDEALS  OF  MISSIOKABY  SEEYICE         251 

son,  one  wonders  whether  it  would  be  really  valuable. 
Either  we  would  decide  that  the  old  ideals  were  higher 
than  our  present  ones,  or  we  would  decide  that  our  present 
ideals  are  higher  than  the  older  ones,  and  either  way,  the 
results  would  be  negative  and  barren. 

It  is  a  great  deal  better  for  us  to  set  up  the  absolute 
ideal  that  laps  across  all  the  years  and  the  generations 
and  then  to  let  our  time  measure  itself  against  that  abso- 
lute ideal ;  to  think  not  of  whether  or  not  the  men  of  a 
former  day  had  more  devotion  and  courage  and  per- 
sistence than  the  men  and  women  of  our  day,  or  the  re- 
verse, but  how  we  in  our  own  day  are  comparing  with  the 
perfect  standard  that  we  hold  up  before  ourselves  in  the 
life  and  character  and  ministry  and  principles  of  action 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  Himself.  And  I  wish  to  pick 
out  here  a  few  of  the  capacities,  the  elements  of  char- 
acter, the  principles  of  action  embodied  in  our  highest 
missionary  ideal  by  which  we  can  judge  what  we  are 
actually  achieving  in  our  missionary  work  to-day. 

First  of  all,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  ought  to  adhere  to 
the  ideal  of  missionary  work  as  a  permanent  life  service. 
There  will  undoubtedly  be  exceptions.  Men  and  women 
will  be  obliged  to  leave  the  missionary  work  on  account 
of  conditions  which  they  cannot  control.  And  again  and 
again  the  indications  of  Providence  will  lead  them,  as  they 
have  led  many  men  and  women  whom  we  know  who  are 
in  this  work,  to  transfer  their  service  to  some  other  de- 
partment of  the  missionary  work  than  the  immediate 
activity  upon  the  foreign  field.  We  have  to-day  in  the 
use  of  short  term  missionaries  an  increasing  tendency  to 
abandon  this  ideal  of  permanent  life  service.  There  is 
something  to  be  said  undoubtedly  in  behalf  of  this  larger 
use  of  short  term  missionaries,  young  men  and  women 
going  out  for  two  or  three  or  five  years,  as  the  case  may 


252     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

be.  It  is  argued  with  justification  in  its  behalf  that  young 
men  and  women  of  this  kind  are  valuable  when  perma- 
nent workers  cannot  be  secured ;  that  there  is  an  economy 
involved  in  it,  because  they  always  go  out  unmarried,  are 
accepted  only  on  that  basis;  that  they  bring  a  certain 
freshness  and  vigour  into  the  life  of  the  schools  where 
they  come;  that  young  men  and  young  women  going  in 
this  way  are  able  to  mingle  on  an  equality  with  the 
students,  as  older  men  and  women  are  not  able  to  do; 
and  furthermore,  there  are  many  of  these  who  are  not 
prepared  to  make  the  final  decision,  but  who  by  this  prac- 
tical experience  in  missionary  work  are  enabled  to  decide 
favourably  toward  a  permanent  commitment  of  their 
lives  to  it.     All  that  is  valuable. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  needs  to  be  recognized  that  the 
element  of  economy  is  more  apparent  than  real.  The 
travelling  expenses  are  just  as  great  for  these  as  for  any 
others,  and  they  have  to  be  met  more  frequently.  In  the 
second  place,  it  involves  a  great  burden  of  administra- 
tion, because  they  have  to  be  perpetually  replaced,  while 
other  workers  stay  through  long  periods  of  time  or  for  the 
whole  of  life.  It  has  to  be  recognized,  also,  that  it  is 
introducing  an  element  of  educational  inefficiency  and 
immaturity,  which  in  India  is  already  beginning  to 
awaken  the  objections  of  the  government  educational 
inspectors.  And  there  is  the  one  other  difficulty,  that  it 
tends  to  break  down  the  ideals  of  permanent  service  in 
the  missionary  undertaking. 

Now  power  comes  with  experience  and  with  time.  It 
is  the  man  who  has  had  twenty,  thirty,  forty  years  who  is 
worth  more  than  any  other  type  of  worker  in  the  mis- 
sionary undertaking.  And  in  the  service  of  the  Boards 
here  at  home  we  also  know  how  valuable  is  the  long  term 
of  activity.     It  is  only  when  the  man  has  been  in  the 


IDEALS  OF  MISSIOKAEY  SERVICE         253 

work  for  a  long  time  that  he  begins  to  feel  at  home  in  it, 
that  he  lays  hold  on  the  principles  and  has  that  adequate 
background  of  missionary  knowledge,  of  comprehension 
of  the  broad  philosophic  principles  that  underlie  our 
undertaking,  which  makes  him  worth  what  a  man  in  his 
place  ought  to  be  worth  to  the  Church  at  home  and  the 
missionary  administration  abroad.  I  believe  that  we  need 
to  adhere  tenaciously  to  the  ideal  of  missionary  work  as 
a  permanent  life  service  and  to  resist  as  much  as  we  can 
the  tendencies  that  break  down  that  ideal. 

In  the  second  place,  I  think  we  need  to  hold  fast  to  a 
principle  of  devotion  in  the  missionary  enterprise  that  is 
superior  to  and  independent  of  all  external  conditions 
whatsoever.  We  need  to  keep  the  motive  in  the  enter- 
prise such  as  would  have  started  the  enterprise  if  it  were 
not  in  existence.  We  cannot  afford  to  maintain  it  now 
on  principles  that  would  not  have  produced  it  at  the  be- 
ginning. 

There  are  a  great  many  influences  that  introduce  the 
conception  of  experiment,  of  probation,  of  tentative  ideal 
in  connection  with  the  missionary  undertaking.  We  need 
to  beware  of  the  ultimate  influence  that  will  result  from 
all  conceptions  of  that  kind.  We  want  in  the  missionary 
undertaking  such  a  power  of  motive  as  will  laugh  at  any 
disappointments  it  may  encounter  on  the  field,  or  as,  if 
it  does  meet  any  conditions  which  it  did  not  anticipate — 
as  it  invariably  will — will  simply  be  able  to  override  and 
conquer  them  by  its  independent  and  indestructible  power. 
It  is  there  to  hold  fast,  whatever  the  outer  circumstances 
and  discouragements  may  be. 

In  the  third  place,  we  need  to  hold  to  the  ideal  of  the 
spirit  of  love  as  the  central  element  in  our  undertaking. 
And  nothing  is  further  from  one's  thought  in  the  matter 
than  the  merely  sentimental  construction  of  that  principle. 


254     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  "WORLD 

I  am  thinking  of  love  as  the  great  set  of  the  will,  as  the 
most  positive  virile  energy  in  our  lives.  We  need  to  keep 
this  dominant  in  our  whole  undertaking.  Love,  for  one 
thing,  is  that  element  in  character  which  demonstrates  in 
ourselves  and  in  all  our  relationships  and  activities  the 
truth  of  the  message  that  we  proclaim.  We  are  preach- 
ing to  the  world  a  Gospel  that  we  say  is  adequate  to  deal 
with  any  situation  whatever  and  to  conquer  any  sin.  If 
it  is  not  able  to  conquer  dissension  in  the  mission  station, 
what  veracity  is  there  in  our  message?  We  have  got  to 
have  a  power  of  love  that  will  bind  men  together,  no 
matter  how  much  the  instinctive  disinclinations  of  their 
temperaments  to  come  together  may  be ;  a  power  of  love 
that  will  apply  the  Gospel  and  enable  works  to  be  seen 
that  will  glorify  God  inside  the  community  of  the  mission 
station  itself. 

We  need  it  as  an  energy  of  propaganda.  There  is  no 
more  powerful  energy  of  propaganda  than  love,  the 
capacity  to  make  friends,  the  contagion  of  personal  af- 
fection, that  quality  in  men  and  women  that  makes  it  im- 
possible for  other  men  and  women  to  distrust  them  or  to 
hold  aloof  from  them,  that  draws  men  and  women  to  the 
Master  by  showing  forth  the  spirit  of  the  Master  in  the 
lives  of  those  who  draw  in  His  name. 

And  we  need  this  ideal  of  love  quite  as  much  as  a  prin- 
ciple of  missionary  administration.  When  it  comes  to 
solving  the  problem  of  transition  of  authority  from  a 
mission  to  a  native  church,  the  euthanasia,  as  Henry 
Venn  used  to  call  it,  of  the  missionary  and  his  authority, 
and  the  supplanting  of  all  his  dignity  and  prominence  by 
those  whom  he  has  trained,  nothing  will  carry  us  through 
the  problems  that  go  with  that  period,  except  the  spirit 
of  love,  real  love,  construed  in  the  terms  in  which  we  see 
it  exemplified  in  the  life  of  our  Lord. 


IDEALS  OF  MISSIONARY  SEEVICE        255 

In  the  fourth  place,  missionary  administrators  need 
among  themselves,  as  well  as  in  the  missions  on  the  field, 
a  living,  quick  and  irrepressible  intellectual  energy  and 
vitality  and  alertness;  for  they  are  dealing  vi^ith  tremen- 
dous problems,  problems  on  which  no  man's  mind  can 
lie  down  and  fall  asleep.  If  there  is  one  activity  in  the 
world  that  calls  for  perpetual  study,  for  ceaseless  think- 
ing, it  is  the  activity  in  which  they  are  engaged.  In  one 
of  the  reports  of  the  Board  of  Missionary  Preparation 
there  is  a  letter  of  Dr.  Gulick  of  Japan  in  which  he  speaks 
of  the  desirability  of  every  missionary  being  an  intellec- 
tual authority  in  some  one  line.  Unless  a  man  is  that, 
unless  he  knows  more  than  other  men  in  some  one  line, 
he  cannot  have  the  influence  that  he  will  have  everywhere 
if  on  one  subject  everybody  will  say,  "  That  man  knows 
more  about  that  subject  than  any  of  the  rest  of  us  know." 
It  may  be  a  very  small  matter.  Dr.  Henry  H.  Jessup's 
knowledge  of  geology  in  Palestine,  and  Dr.  Adolphus 
Good's  knowledge  of  butterflies  in  western  Africa — and 
you  might  multiply  these  illustrations  indefinitely — were 
real  missionary  assets. 

There  must  not  only  be  intellectual  vitality  and  alert- 
ness in  this  regard,  but  the  missionary  and  the  worker  at 
home  must  be  a  perpetual  reader.  I  read  a  missionary 
speech  a  little  while  ago  in  which  one  missionary  was 
advising  his  fellow  missionaries  to  read  at  least  one  book 
a  year.  Assuredly,  but  one  fears  that  a  man  whose  speed 
is  measured  in  that  way  cannot  stand  up  very  long. 
There  must  be  more  velocity  than  that  even  to  keep  erect, 
much  less  to  speak  of  any  momentum.  Every  man  is 
quite  apt  to  dry  up,  his  mind  become  lazy  and  weak  un- 
less he  is  a  perpetual  reader.  One  book  a  year  is  nothing 
for  us  to  think  about.  Every  missionary  ought  to  read 
at  least  one  book  a  month.     Many  of  them  can  and  ough^ 


256     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

to  read  one  book  a  week,  and  workers  in  the  mission 
boards  at  home  ought  not  to  think  as  an  ideal  of  reading 
less  than  one  new  book,  a  good  book,  every  week,  if  they 
want  their  minds  to  keep  alert  and  alive  and  well  fur- 
nished and  quick  and  eager. 

And  beyond  this  thing  missionary  workers  at  home 
need  this  intellectual  alertness  in  order  that  they  may 
really  enter  into  the  broad  intellectual  problems  that  are 
stirring  the  life  of  all  these  peoples  across  the  world. 
Missionaries  do  enter  into  the  political  life  of  these  peo- 
ple, but  we  do  not  enter  enough  into  their  intellectual  life, 
the  shiftings  of  the  bases  of  their  thought,  the  great  prob- 
lems that  they  are  dealing  with,  their  solutions  of  those 
problems.  If  we  really  want  to  measure  up  to  the  ideals 
of  our  task  we  must  be  intellectually  alive  to  these  things 
and  more  alive  than  any  men  and  women  with  whom  we 
are  dealing. 

In  the  fifth  place,  our  ideals  to-day  must  include  spiri- 
tual originality,  first-handedness.  We  are  givers  of  life, 
bearers  of  light  to  these  lands.  A  light  can  only  be  car- 
ried as  it  is  itself  original  light.  We  have  got  to  take 
life  out  to  these  people.  Life  is  not  a  transportable 
thing  except  as  it  is  an  original  life  by  and  in  itself.  We 
need  to  go  out  to  these  fields  not  with  qualifications  of  the 
parasitical  type,  but  with  an  original  first-hand  contact 
with  the  source,  a  knowledge  of  truth  that  is  our  own 
knowledge,  not  a  borrowed  knowledge  from  anybody  else ; 
an  acquaintance  with  life  that  is  our  own  acquaintance, 
that  makes  it  possible  for  us  to  say  in  as  true  a  way  as 
John  said  it,  "  That  which  my  eyes  have  seen  and  my 
ears  have  heard  and  my  hands  have  handled  of  the  Word 
of  Life  communicate  I  to  you."  We  have  a  great  prom- 
ise on  which  we  ought  to  be  relying,  "  Out  of  the  depths 
of  his  life  shall  pour  torrents  of  living  water." 


IDEALS  OF  MISSIONARY  SEEVICE        257 

And  last  of  all  we  must  hold  fast  in  our  missionary 
ideals  to  a  purpose  of  effort,  of  tireless,  indomitable,  un- 
resting— using  that  word  with  its  proper  qualifications 
and  offsets — unresting  toil  and  energy  of  action.  Now 
this  is  one  of  the  hardest  things  in  missionary  life.  Any 
man  who  has  spent  any  time  in  the  tropics  knows  what  a 
hard  thing  it  is  to  keep  the  fires  burning  as  hot  and  the 
engines  driving  as  hard  under  those  conditions  as  here 
in  our  temperate  climate  with  all  the  accelerations  that 
come  with  our  changing  seasons.  Here  we  meet  an- 
other set  of  missionary  problems  regarding  the  conditions 
of  the  missionary's  home  life:  that  he  should  have  a 
sanitary,  hygienic  dwelling  and  proper  food,  and  that  his 
mind  should  be  relieved  from  all  unnecessary  care  so  that 
every  condition  should  be  afforded  that  will  keep  his 
energies  at  the  highest,  and  enable  him  to  pour  the  fullest 
maximum  of  power  and  energetic  action  into  his  doing  of 
his  tasks. 

And  a  great  deal  depends,  of  course,  upon  standards. 
"  You  know,"  somebody  said  to  Lyman  Beecher  once  re- 
garding a  certain  man,  "  that  he  has  too  many  irons  in 
the  fire."  "  Too  many  irons  in  the  fire  ?  "  said  old  Lyman 
Beecher ;  "  bless  me,  that  cannot  be  done.  Why,  a  man 
ought  to  have  all  his  irons  in  the  fire,  and  the  shovel  and 
the  tongs  and  the  poker  and  the  coal  scuttle,  too."  And 
that  is  perfectly  true.  Unless  a  man  does  have  every- 
thing he  has  got  in  the  fire,  he  won't  have  anything  hot 
enough  to  do  anything  with. 

There  are  limits,  to  be  sure.  The  whole  of  life  is  com- 
pensations and  offsets.  Nevertheless,  this  is  the  prin- 
ciple that  we  really  deeply  need.  There  are  a  few  who 
are  in  danger  of  being  too  active  in  our  Lord's  service, 
but  they  are  very  few.  Not  many  men  break  down  be- 
cause of  overwork.    There   is   something  else  besides 


258     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

overwork  that  breaks  them  down.  A  score  of  other 
things  may  be  there.  Now  and  then  there  will  be  over- 
work. Now  and  then  one  over-conscientious  man  who 
has  not  a  physically  good  basis  of  equipment  will  overdo 
it;  and  many  and  many  a  man  knows  how  much  easier 
it  would  be  for  him  to  throw  himself  out  than  it  is  to 
hold  himself  wisely  and  judiciously  in  check  as  he 
realizes  that  he  must. 

All  this  has  to  be  taken  into  account,  but  after  it  has 
been,  these  things  are  true:  we  are  called  to  be  fellow 
builders,  men  who  create,  who  construct,  who  erect,  who 
leave  something  where  there  was  nothing  before.  That 
is  what  St.  Paul  called  himself  and  all  men  who  had  the 
same  ideal,  fellow  builders  with  God.  We  are  that.  In 
our  missionary  work  we  have  to  keep  that  foremost  in 
our  thought  all  the  time.  It  is  an  invisible  building,  to 
be  sure.  I  do  not  mean  that  every  man  has  to  build  an 
organization  or  a  visible  institution.  A  great  many  more 
men  and  women  are  needed  who  will  be  satisfied  with  in- 
visible building  in  these  days,  to  let  their  structure  be  the 
kind  that  the  eyes  do  not  look  on,  but  that  will  endure 
the  tests  of  fire  at  the  last  and  remain  when  those  testing 
fires  are  burned  down  to  ash  and  cinder. 

And  to  bring  it  closely  home  in  personal  life  we  need 

the  principle  which  is  in  one  of  Dr.  Bonar's  hymns.     We 

sing  it  again  and  again,  but  do  we  actually  live  it  as  we 

might,  on  the  field  or  in  our  support  of  foreign  missions 

at  home? 

"Time  worketh;  let  me  work  too. 
Time  undoeth;  let  me  do. 
Busy  as  time  my  work  I  ply 
Till  I  rest  in  the  rest  of  eternity. 

"  Sin  worketh;  let  me  work  too. 
Sin  undoeth;  let  me  do. 
Busy  as  sin  my  work  I  ply 
Till  I  rest  in  the  rest  of  eternity. 


IDEALS  OF  MISSIOKAEY  SEEYICE         259 

"Death  worketh;  let  me  work  too. 
Death  undoeth;  let  me  do. 
Busy  as  death  my  work  I  ply 
Till  I  rest  in  the  rest  of  eternity/* 


XIII 
MISSIONARY  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE 


THE  methods  of  work  of  two  well-known  men 
of  letters  have  recently  been  described  by  those 
magazine  writers  to  whom  nothing  is  secret 
and  by  whom  nothing  is  hid.  One  of  these  men  was  a 
novelist  and  the  other  an  historian.  Their  processes  of 
production  wxre  far  removed  from  the  ways  of  Scott  and 
Gibbon.  Instead  of  sitting  down  alone  and  writing  out 
with  their  own  hands  the  material  gathered  by  experience 
and  conversation  and  their  own  laborious  and  exacting 
research,  these  authors  set  about  their  work  with  the  full 
equipment  of  a  commercial  agency  or  business  organiza- 
tion. There  were  extensive  and  scientifically  equipped 
offices,  with  investigating  and  recording  clerks,  card 
catalogues  and  filing  cabinets  of  material,  typists  and 
their  machines.  The  authors  came  in  for  regular  office 
hours,  to  go  over  the  materials  prepared  and  to  dictate 
from  them  the  articles  or  books  which  would  be  sub- 
jected to  various  well-organized  revising  processes  and 
then  issued  as  the  finished  output.  If  the  spontaneity  and 
genius  of  literature  have  taken  up  the  methods  of  busi- 
ness organization  and  efficiency  it  may  be  assumed  that 
these  methods  have  come  to  prevail  almost  everywhere. 
Factories  of  letters  mean  factories  of  all  else.     If  litera- 

260 


MISSIONABT  ORGANIZATION  AND  LIFE   261 

ture  can  be  organized  and  manufactured,  why  should  not 
the  same  processes  be  applied,  as  they  are,  to  patriotism, 
business,  war,  politics,  religion  and  missions? 

It  is  of  course  very  different  from  the  old  days.  A 
missionary  from  an  old  Pietist  community  on  the  conti- 
nent, passing  through  New  York  City  some  years  ago  and 
visiting  one  of  the  missionary  boards  in  a  great  building 
of  its  own  on  the  principal  street  and  going  through  its 
scores  of  offices  with  a  hundred  and  more  employees  and 
the  equipment  and  organization  of  a  modern  business, 
was  cast  down  by  it  all.  It  seemed  to  him  an  alien  world 
into  which  he  had  come.  His  own  mission  was  such  a 
simple  affair.  Its  home  office  was  a  back  parlour  in  a 
family  home  and  its  machinery  consisted  of  small  groups 
of  pious  people  with  simple  collections  of  their  gifts,  and 
of  little  more.  But  after  all  in  literature  and  missions 
alike  it  is  a  matter  of  spirit  and  degree.  Scott  writing  his 
books  with  pen  and  ink  on  paper  and  scattering  them  by 
the  tens  of  thousands  by  means  of  the  printing  press  and 
the  book  trade,  and  Gibbon  mastering  his  materials  in 
great  libraries  and  moulding  them  into  his  massive  history 
are  farther  removed  from  Homer  and  Herodotus  than  we 
are  from  Scott  and  Gibbon.  And  the  missionary  trans- 
formation from  St.  Paul  to  Carey  is  over  a  larger  and 
wider  chasm  than  from  Carey  to  us.  Even  from  Boni- 
face to  the  founding  of  the  London  Missionary  Society  is 
a  longer  step  and  a  more  radical  change  than  from  the 
founding  of  our  foreign  missionary  societies  to  their 
present  development  and  organization. 

This  elaboration  of  missionary  machinery  is  not  con- 
fined to  the  home  administrative  office.  It  is  seen  on 
the  mission  field.  There  the  individual  missionary  speak- 
ing to  men  in  conversation  or  In  public  address  about 
Christ  is  now  an  inadequate  representation  of  missions. 


262     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

There  are  great  institutions,  schools,  hospitals,  presses, 
industries.  There  are  committees  and  conferences.  Hun- 
dreds of  agents  are  employed  and  must  be  supervised  and 
paid.  Many  missionaries  sit  in  offices  just  like  secre- 
taries at  home  and  do  their  work  by  writing  letters,  or 
by  deciding  problems  in  whose  immediate  incidence  upon 
life  they  do  not  share.  And  nowadays  there  is  yet  an- 
other region  in  which  organization  proposes  to  outdis- 
tance all  that  has  been  dreamed  of  in  the  past.  And  the 
past,  it  must  be  remembered,  dreamed  of  a  good  deal. 
One  needs  only  to  read  the  lives  of  missionary  leaders 
both  in  Great  Britain  and  in  America  in  the  first  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  especially  lives  like  Alexander 
Duff's  and  Jeremiah  Evarts',  to  see  that  we  have  much 
less  to  teach  them  in  the  way  of  organization  than  we 
suppose.  But  we  have  something  to  teach  even  them 
and  a  great  deal  more  to  teach  their  generation.  We  are 
proposing  now  by  publicity  and  advertisement,  by  the 
prudent  use  of  the  lessons  of  mass  psychology,  by  parish 
organization  and  methods  of  benevolence,  by  the  rational 
adaptation  of  principles  of  business  efficiency  and  organi- 
zation to  "  sell  foreign  missions  "  (this  is  the  technical 
phrase)  to  the  whole  Christian  public,  and  for  that  matter 
to  the  non-Christian  public  also.  As  a  capable  advertis- 
ing man  wrote  us : 

"  If  some  patriotic  layman  of  the  Presbyterian  Church 
would  put  $250,000  at  the  disposal  of  an  advertising 
agency  that  I  could  name — not  my  own — that  agency 
would  give  you  plans  for  securing  say  treble  or  quadruple 
as  much  missionary  money  for  the  Presbyterian  Church 
as  has  been  raised  any  year  yet,  with  less  general  over- 
head charges  in  proportion  than  it  now  costs,  and  with 
the  big  asset  of  vastly  increasing,  for  future  years,  mis- 
sionary good-will. 

"  Would  this  agency  guarantee  it  ? 


MISSIONARY  OEGANIZATION  AND  LIFE    263 

"No,  but  with  the  experience  of  business  as  success- 
fully promoted,  with  records  that  can  be  shown  of  big 
commercial  undertakings  in  these  days  when  men  are 
thinking  in  world  terms,  I  know  it  can  be  done." 

In  other  words,  missions  need  in  order  to  succeed  only  a 
sensible  and  courageous  use  of  the  methods  of  business 
organization. 

As  my  friend's  letter  shows,  you  must  spend  money 
in  order  to  get  it.  That  is  now  the  larger  part  of  the 
cost  of  missionary  administration.  The  machinery  and 
the  expense  of  actually  conducting  missionary  work,  of 
using  the  money  given  and  of  directing  the  enterprise 
have  increased  little.  Proportionately  to  the  volume  of 
the  work  they  have  much  decreased.  The  large  increase 
in  the  administrative  expense  of  missionary  boards  has 
been  in  the  home  department,  the  promotion  of  intelli- 
gence and  the  collection  of  funds.  Here,  as  the  advertis- 
ing men  all  inform  us,  "  It  is  just  a  matter  of  how  much 
you  are  willing  to  spend.  If  you  spend  so  much  in  pro- 
motion you  will  get  so  much.  If  you  double  your  outlay 
you  will  double  or  more  than  double  your  income.  It  is 
recognized  that  the  real  power  is  in  ideas,  but  the  ideas 
are  powerful  in  proportion  as  they  are  in  circulation  and 
circulation  costs  money.  Of  course  a  man  can  go  around 
and  if  he  is  a  vivid  personality  he  can  propagate  the  idea, 
but  he  represents  outlay— his  travel  and  his  own  cash 
value  as  a  promoter.  And  the  day  is  gone  by  for  trust- 
ing to  such  personalities.  We  know  now  the  psychology 
of  the  whole  thing  and  a  man  like  the  prophets  of  one 
generation  or  two  or  three  or  a  hundred  generations  ago 
is  a  waste  as  an  individualistic  itinerant.  He  needs  to  be 
used  and  to  use  others.  A  press  agent,  a  wise  advertising 
man,  a  campaign  manager  and  a  proper  follow-up  system 
would  net  a  hundredfold  bigger  result  from  a  prophet 


264     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

than  you  will  ever  get  from  a  prophet  let  loose  after  the 
old  style." 

II 

There  is  a  kinship  and  yet  an  immense  distance  be- 
tween this  and  the  eager  interest  of  the  rapidly  spreading 
talk  about  the  lakeside  long  ago  when  Jesus  was  pub- 
lishing His  wonderful  message  and  stirring  men  with 
His  call,  "  Come  after  Me  and  I  will  make  you  fishers 
of  men."  There  is  a  resemblance  and  yet  what  a  dif- 
ference. 

What  was  Christ's  ideal  and  method  for  Himself? 
There  were  no  limitations  in  God,  prescribing  the  form 
which  the  Incarnation  should  take.  Jesus  might  have 
been  born  in  any  social  level  or  in  the  way  of  any  natural 
advantages.  He  might  have  come  as  the  son  of  Caesar, 
as  a  man  of  wealth,  or  as  a  master  of  organization.  He 
rejected  all  these  forms  of  influence  and  deliberately 
subjected  Himself  to  conditions  which  deprived  Him  of 
any  method  of  action  except  simple  personal  influence. 
This  is  the  last  thing  we  should  have  descended  to  in  His 
place.  One  of  the  first  things  we  would  do  in  setting  out 
to  undo  all  wrong  and  establish  all  righteousness  would 
be  to  enlist  legislation  and  the  forces  of  government  which 
make  legislation  operative.  We  must  change  the  order 
of  society,  we  maintain.  But  Jesus  would  have  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  politics.  He  discouraged  every 
effort  to  politicize  His  mission,  and  He  entirely  divorced 
His  method  from  every  suspicion  or  possibility  of  political 
entanglement.  Next  to  the  conviction  that  without 
legislation  nothing  of  a  radical  or  adequate  character  can 
be  done,  is  our  modern  axiom  that  money  is  indispensa- 
ble. We  speculate  on  the  power  of  v/ealth  to  produce 
moral  and  spiritual  reforms.  We  make  plans  for  the 
extension  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  which  need  only  wealth 


MISSIONAEY  OEGANIZATION  AND  LIFE    265 

behind  them  to  revolutionize  the  world.  "  With  wealth," 
we  say,  unconsciously  altering  a  great  saying  of  Christ's, 
*'  nothing  is  impossible."  Indeed  the  logic  of  our  attitude 
often  would  drive  us  to  complete  the  parody :  "  With 
God  it  is  impossible,  but  not  with  money ;  for  with  money 
all  things  are  possible."  Jesus  never  spoke  thus.  Such 
ideas  never  entered  His  thought.  Money  in  any  ca- 
pacity, least  of  all  as  a  method  of  influence,  was  of  no 
interest  to  Him.  His  references  to  it  are  usually  con- 
temptuous. The  idea  of  relying  upon  gold  to  alter 
character  and  to  make  dead  men  live  would  have  seemed 
pitiful  to  Him.  As  for  organization,  which  is  the  third 
great  reliance  of  our  day,  that,  too.  He  treated  with  a 
silent  indifference.  Our  great  generals  and  engineers  and 
merchants  and  statesmen  to-day  are  the  organizers,  the 
men  who  arrange  men  and  classify  them  and  fix  their 
grades  and  orders  and  swing  them  as  a  mechanism. 
Jesus,  however,  was  not  a  mechanic  in  this  sense.  He 
had  earned  His  bread  by  a  trade,  but  religion  was  not  a 
trade  to  Him.  He  was  not  a  drill-master  nor  a  manipu- 
lator of  men.  When  His  disciples  urged  Him  to  set  up 
some  sort  of  organization  and  assign  them  their  place  in 
it.  He  refused,  and  He  died  at  last  without  having  done 
anything  whatever  to  assure  the  permanence  of  His 
movement  by  organization. 

Now  legislation  and  wealth  and  organization  are  all 
legitimate  and  noble  agencies  for  the  accomplishment  of 
right  ends.  Men  act  with  propriety  when  they  seek  to 
subordinate  these  forces  to  the  ends  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God.  Jesus,  however,  did  not  do  so.  He  was  neither  a 
political  nor  a  financial  figure.  He  just  went  about  in  a 
simple  fashion,  talking  to  people,  telling  them  His  ideas, 
giving  help  here  and  there  in  a  tender,  sympathetic  way, 
doing  good  generously  but  by  no  means  indiscriminately, 


266     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

laying  out  His  life  upon  any  responsive  life  He  could 
find,  "  catching  men,"  to  use  His  own  expression,  and 
catching  them  not  in  multitudes  or  by  great  orations  but 
in  quiet  individual  v^ays ;  and  then  He  died  and  that  was 
the  end  of  it.  Was  that  the  end  of  it?  Indeed  that  was 
only  the  beginning  of  it.  We  see  now  that  what  was 
going  on  so  quietly  and  unostentatiously  there  in  a  se- 
cluded corner  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  the  greatest  up- 
heaving movement  of  all  history. 

If  we  compare  our  modern  organized  way  with  St. 
Paul's  fashion  of  work  the  resemblance  may  be  a  little 
clearer  but  the  difference  is  scarcely  less  clear.  He  surely 
was  an  organizer.  He  sought  out  the  capable  young  men 
and  laid  responsibility  upon  them.  He  formed  great 
projects  and  adopted  measures  and  selected  men  with  a 
far-sighted  and  deliberate  view  to  achieving  his  ends. 
He  sought  the  kinds  of  publicity  which  served  his  pur- 
poses. He  dealt  with  all  levels  of  society  and  used  the 
means  of  access  which  were  necessary.  He  carried  his 
cause  before  kings  and  governors  and  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity of  appealing  to  Rome  that  he  might  get  to  the 
very  head  and  center  of  the  world.  He  was  not  content 
to  issue  his  message  and  pass  on.  He  planned  to  con- 
serve and  perpetuate.  He  gathered  the  results  of  his 
work  into  simple  but  effective  organized  groups.  He 
kept  in  touch  with  these  so  far  as  the  possibilities  of  his 
day  allowed.  If  there  had  been  more  possibilities  we  may 
be  sure  that  he  would  have  used  them.  He  worked  out 
systems  of  supervision  and  responsibility  and  moved 
about  personally  and  through  his  missionaries  in  a  pro- 
gram of  comprehensive  and  skillful  world  evan- 
gelization. As  an  organizer  of  world  influence  both  in 
his  ideals  and  in  his  methods  Paul  led  his  generation. 

It  will  not  do  for  us  to  plead  Paul  against  the  adapta- 


MISSIONAEY  OEGANIZATION  AND  LIFE    267 

tion  and  use  of  all  the  instrumentalities  of  efficiency  and 
of  influence  which  our  time  affords.  Nor  can  we  reject 
them  in  the  interest  of  the  simple  and  unaffected  methods 
of  our  Lord.  We  might  as  well  reject  railroad  travel  or 
the  telegraph  or  steamships  or  motor-cars  or  the  printing 
press.  In  every  department  of  life  new  tools  have  been 
provided.  He  would  be  a  foolish  man  who  would  reject 
them,  who  in  war  would  reject  machine-guns  and  go  back 
to  bows  and  arrows,  who  in  transportation  would  reject 
railroads  and  return  to  human  carriers,  who  in  medicine 
would  go  back  to  leeches  and  blood-letting  and  herbs. 

Ill 

The  problem  for  missionary  organization  is  not  be- 
tween the  employment  or  the  refusal  of  all  conceivable 
instrumentalities  of  efficiency  and  influence,  it  is  a  prob- 
lem of  the  spirit  and  end,  the  proportion  and  actual  result. 
There  is  a  vast  deal  of  organization  which  is  nothing  but 
traditional  or  imitative,  or  which  absorbs  as  much  energy 
as  it  produces.  A  missionary  worker  at  the  home  base 
analyzes  the  situation  in  this  way : 

"  Missionary  societies  here  are  working  with  energy 
and  devotion  and  a  good  deal  of  their  work  is  flexible 
and  high  grade.  But  they  are  loaded  up  in  many  cases 
with  a  mass  of  organization  which  would  be  scrapped  at 
once  if  it  were  examined  in  a  fresh  light.  Besides  this, 
there  is  a  considerable  amount  of  organization,  good 
enough  in  its  form,  which  is  used  as  an  end  in  itself 
rather  than  as  a  channel  for  the  transmission  of  life.  The 
remedy  for  local  stagnation  is  often  sought  in  a  new  bit 
of  machinery  rather  than  in  a  renewed  current  of  spiritual 
life. 

"  This  is  very  evident  in  some  of  our  missionary  com- 
mittees. They  are  choked  up  with  a  fixed  membership 
and  have  little  room  for  young  life  or  free  thought; 


268     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOBLD 

their  outlook  is  so  tame  that  a  former  minute  governs 
them  more  than  a  new  condition;  they  hug  the  shore  of 
the  past. 

"  Then  we  have  innumerable  unions,  guilds,  fellow- 
ships, associations,  movements  on  behalf  of  foreign  mis- 
sions all  over  the  country,  with  thousands  of  office-hold- 
ers who  put  through  a  large  amount  of  routine  work  in 
filling  blanks,  enrolling  members,  collecting  funds,  and 
arranging  small  local  meetings.  The  channels  are  numer- 
ous and  fairly  well  planned,  but  very  often  the  current 
through  them  is  sluggish  and  the  disproportion  between 
work  and  result  is  startling.  There  are  myriads  of 
women  who  organize  meetings  for  needlework,  get  up 
sales  of  work,  make  garments  to  send  abroad  to  mission- 
aries, or  prepare  presents  for  mission  pupils.  A  fuller 
inspiration  behind  their  devoted  service  would  make  it 
richer  in  every  way.  A  large  group  of  persons  organize 
work  for  young  people.  A  good  deal  of  this  is  on  modern 
lines  but  some  of  it  is  still  superficial  and  lacking  in  spiri- 
tual vitality.  Many  people  are  secretaries  for  the  dis- 
tribution of  literature,  others  specialize  in  the  collection  of 
funds.  Most  vital,  perhaps,  of  all,  there  is  a  mass  of  ma- 
chinery in  connection  with  prayer,  for  enrolling  members 
in  prayer  unions  and  preparing  and  circulating  requests 
and  topics  for  prayer. 

"  This  vast  complex  of  work  is  cause  for  thankfulness, 
yet  as  one  goes  through  the  country  and  sees  place  after 
place  unquickened  and  great  areas  of  the  home  base 
practically  unreached,  one  is  filled  with  a  sense  of  how 
little  organization  can  do  without  the  tide  of  life  behind 
it." 


Heart  searchings  like  these  are  not  confined  to  the 
home  base.  There  are  kindred  problems  on  the  foreign 
field.  There,  too,  institutions  and  activities  are  kept  go- 
ing just  because  they  were  once  started  or  they  are 
started  because  others  have  them  or  because  this  is  the 
way  things  are  done  at  home,  or  they  are  allowed  to  ab- 
sorb all  the  available  personal  forces  so  that  instruments 


MISSIONAEY  OEGANIZATION  AND  LIFE   269 

designed  for  the  accomplishment  of  ends  beyond  them- 
selves become  themselves  ends.  Bishop  Brent  in  his 
account  of  his  episcopal  service  in  the  Philippine  Islands 
makes  frank  and  sorrowful  comment  on  this : 


"  One  cannot  help  wondering  whether  there  is  not 
likely  to  be  change  both  at  home  and  abroad  in  the  place 
held  by  institutionalism  in  the  Church's  mode  of  opera- 
tion. The  institution  is  of  spiritual  value  in  so  far  as  it 
becomes  a  vehicle  for  that  personal  labour  of  the  pastor 
for  which  its  mechanics  can  never  be  a  substitute.  Fre- 
quently— I  speak  from  experience — the  burden  of  holding 
organizations  together  and  the  killing  anxiety  of  financing 
them  leaves  but  little  room  and  vitality  for  a  missionary 
bishop  to  do  that  which  after  all  is  his  chief  duty.  The 
mission  field  has  lost  something,  whatever  its  gain  may 
have  been,  in  which  the  early  days  were  rich.  I  mean 
that  simple  evangelistic  faith,  which,  unembarrassed  by 
facilities  and  machinery,  devoted  its  total  energies  to  the 
ministry  of  the  Word,  and  was  richly  rewarded.  God 
knows  with  what  great  longing  many  of  us,  caught  in  the 
tangle  of  organizations,  have  looked  toward  and  coveted 
such  a  life.  A  pioneer  is  rich  in  compensations  for  all 
his  pains  and  toils,  but  retrospect  sometimes  reveals  to 
him  where  loss  of  perspective  has  increased  his  difficulties 
and  impeded  his  progress.  I  am  not  sure  that  were  I  to 
live  my  episcopal  career  over  again  I  would  not  in  the 
main  pursue  the  same  course  as  I  actually  followed,  but 
I  think  I  would  at  any  rate  be  at  more  deliberate  pains 
than  I  have  been  to  spiritualize  and  moralize  every  in- 
stitution organized.  As  things  are,  much  of  that  task 
remains  for  those  Avho  come  after  me." 

What  concerns  missionaries  and  missionary  workers  is 
the  remedy  for  wrong  proportion,  for  ineffectiveness  of 
organization,  whether  from  its  antiquatedness  or  its  over- 
elaborateness,  for  the  secularizing  and  mechanicalizing 
influence    if    institutionalism    and    so-called    "business 


270     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

methods/'    Perhaps  a  few  constructive  suggestions  max 
be  made. 

IV 

First  of  all,  let  all  publicity  effort  be  absolutely  sub- 
ordinated to  the  truth.  The  missionary  movement  is  a 
publicity  movement.  Its  ultimate  aim  is  the  proclama- 
tion of  the  Gospel  to  the  whole  world,  and  its  means  of 
accomplishing  this  aim  is  the  presentation  of  the  mis- 
sionary duty  and  privilege  to  the  Christian  conscience. 
In  this  endeavour  deputations,  public  meetings,  publica- 
tions, correspondence,  the  development  of  auxiliary  or- 
ganizations, the  use  of  the  press,  are  all  legitimate  and 
necessary.  We  may  do  in  a  great  variety  of  ways  to-day 
what  in  earlier  days  could  be  done  only  by  personal  itine- 
ration. But  our  danger  has  been  and  is  that  we  should 
be  misled  by  political  and  commercial  analogies.  We  are 
making  many  such  mistakes  to-day  in  the  effort  to  secure 
missionary  support  from  elements  of  the  population  in 
and  out  of  the  Church  who  do  not  have  the  religious 
motive  for  giving  such  support.  And  a  good  part  of 
our  modern  organization  is  designed  to  capitalize  political 
and  philanthropic  and  ecclesiastical  support  from  those 
who  have  not  given  and  are  not  likely  to  give  religious 
support.  The  result  is  a  shoddy  imitation  of  a  modern 
business  developed  on  advertising.  The  remedy  is  the 
truth.  If  we  steadfastly  tell  the  whole  truth  about  the 
missionary  enterprise,  its  real  aim,  character,  work,  some 
kinds  of  publicity  will  be  found  to  be  impossible  and 
those  which  are  possible  will  be  within  our  power  and 
effective  for  our  real  ends. 

In  the  second  place,  the  whole  organization  of  mis- 
sionary work  at  home  can  be  kept  simpler  and  truer  in 
proportion  as  giving  is  kept  on  a  right  and  true  basis. 


MISSIONARY  OEGANIZATION  AND  LIFE    271 

It  is  the  modern  financial  campaign  or  "  drive  "  which 
involves  costly  and  elaborate  organization  with  skillful 
advertising,  the  camouflaging  of  all  aspects  of  the  work 
which  can  in  any  way  touch  any  one's  prejudice,  the  in- 
tensive and  hectic  solicitation,  the  appeal  to  any  effective 
motive,  the  psychological  use  of  the  elements  of  bigness, 
crisis,  singularity.  The  missionary  enterprise  can  be 
easily  misled  by  these  examples.  Let  it  remember  that 
it  is  not  a  sudden  spurt,  but  a  steady  and  continuous  and 
deathless  endeavour.  Let  it  remember  that  motives  mat- 
ter, that  all  money  is  not  alike,  that  a  pound  or  a  dollar 
from  one  hand  may  be  worth  a  thousand  from  another. 
Let  it  build  on  truth  in  the  principles  of  giving.  What 
is  needed  by  the  churches  and  by  the  missionary  societies 
in  this  matter  does  not  call  for  great  organization.  Great 
organization,  developing  the  appeal  to  and  reliance  upon 
other  motives  and  principles  than  those  which  are  based 
on  simple  and  pure  religion,  may  mislead  and  damage 
the  whole  missionary  enterprise.  The  real  need  is  for 
true  teaching  in  the  churches  by  the  clergy  and  for  true 
training  in  the  home  by  Christian  parents  with  regard  to 
the  principles  of  stewardship,  the  right  meaning  and  use 
of  wealth,  great  or  small.  Organization  which  not  only 
ignores  the  fundamental  spiritual  laws  of  Christian  char- 
acter and  obligation  but  substitutes  for  them  motives  and 
appeals  drawn  from  business  conceived  in  its  old  and 
gross  commercial  and  competitive  aspects,  is  costly  to 
set  up  and  operate,  and  no  matter  what  its  returns  is  a 
foolish  missionary  expedient.  The  missionary  enterprise 
ought  to  be  supported  on  a  spiritual  basis  in  keeping  with 
its  spiritual  character.  Such  support  requires  only  or- 
ganization in  harmony  with  it. 

In  the  third  place,  while  conflict  between  the  personal 
and  individual  emphasis  and  the  emphasis  on  institution 


272     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

and  organization  is  not  a  necessary  issue  it  is  too  often  an 
actual  reality.  Paul  laid  the  foundations  of  an  institution, 
but  it  was  all  alive.  The  personal  elements  were  domi- 
nant in  it.  Life  moulded  and  used  the  forms  provided 
for  it,  invented  new  ones,  sloughed  off  the  old.  The  or- 
ganization was  an  agency  of  life,  not  a  burden  on  it. 
With  us  too  often  the  machine  absorbs  the  energy  which 
was  intended  by  means  of  the  machine  to  be  brought  to 
bear  upon  tasks  beyond.  We  all  know  the  ailment. 
What  is  the  remedy?  Sometimes  it  is  the  scrapping  of 
the  machine,  sometimes  it  is  repair  and  readjustment, 
sometimes  the  one  simple  need  is  that  persons,  still  using 
the  machine,  should  detach  themselves  and  their  time 
sufficiently  from  it  to  deal  daily  in  a  personal  way  with 
other  persons.  Perhaps  at  the  outset  it  will  be  enough 
if  they  find  a  way  of  daily  acting  personally  on  some 
one  other  person.  The  head  of  the  mission  college  may 
begin  his  emancipation  from  his  subjection  to  his  institu- 
tion and  his  entrance  on  a  new  era  of  power  by  taking 
time  to  deal  personally  with  one  boy  each  day.  A  mis- 
sionary secretary  can  force  his  prison  bars  by  one  daily 
personal  unorganized  outreach  beyond  the  institution. 
In  each  local  agency  the  man  or  woman  who  is  alive  may 
release  the  forces  of  life  by  adding  In  or  over  the  process 
of  the  agency  a  touch  by  word  or  letter  or  deed  upon  a 
new  life. 

Lastly,  the  problem  is  one  of  the  relation  of  means  to 
ends,  of  power  to  control  and  use,  of  the  organization  of 
matter  to  its  animating  reality.  Our  present  methods 
and  devices  all  need  innovations  and  will  soon  be  out- 
classed. So  far  as  they  can  be  used  in  truth  and  spiritual 
sincerity  we  are  free  to  use  them  if  they  serve  the  great 
end.  But  the  end  is  the  possession  of  persons  by  Christ 
and  the  possession  by  persons  of  Christ.    Is  our  organi- 


MISSIONARY  OEGANIZATION  AND  LIFE    273 

zation  accomplishing  that  ?  It  may  be  doing  many  other 
things.  It  may  be  fiUing  the  newspapers.  It  may  be 
giving  us  no  small  public  place.  But  these  are  all  danger- 
ous at  the  best  and  are  pure  delusion  if  they  are  not  pro- 
viding for  us  and  for  the  personal  forces  which  we  direct 
that  harvest  from  the  ground  of  the  human  soul,  of  which 
our  Lord  speaks,  by  which  we  and  they  do  not  abide 
alone.  After  all,  we  ourselves  are  persons  and  it  is 
persons  we  are  after.  Francis  of  Assisi  sets  out  alone. 
He  has  no  assets  and  will  accumulate  none.  With  or- 
ganization in  our  modern  sense  he  will  have  nothing  to 
do,  and  the  impulse  of  his  soul  and  of  his  idea  moves  in 
the  world  to  this  day.  John  Wilhelm  Rowntree  worked 
with  an  ideal  of  organization,  the  organization  of  settle- 
ments for  religious  study.  His  first  plans  were  too  am- 
bitious and  he  drew  them  in,  not  desiring  to  attempt 
what  could  not  be  filled  and  empowered  of  life.  He  built 
as  he  desired.  But  the  greatest  thing  about  him  was  his 
life,  "  a  life  luminous  with  character  and  goodness,"  and 
lived  in  tragic  physical  limitations  against  which  it 
wrought  out  only  a  larger  fullness.  "His  long,  hard 
battle  with  a  stubborn  disease  which  was  attacking  the 
very  citadel  of  his  power— his  sight,  his  hearing  and  his 
memory— only  made  him  more  heroic  and  gentle."  Life 
was  more  than  master  of  its  forces.  It  was  by  Himself 
that  our  Lord  purged  our  sins.  Whatever  we  make  of 
the  exegesis,  the  historic  fact  is  clear.  He  did  it  by 
Himself,  not  with  or  by  anything  else,  neither  His  doc- 
trine nor  His  cross — but  by  Himself.  Not  otherwise  does 
He  do  His  work  to-day.    Not  otherwise  may  we. 


XIV 

NEW  ASPECTS  OF  THE  RELATIONS  OF 
EAST  AND  WEST 

1.  T  T  is  no  longer  possible  to  speak  of  the  changing 
I  West  and  the  immovable  East.  Once  perhaps  the 
JL  East  lifted  its  head  to  see  the  legions  thunder  by 
and  then  dropped  to  sleep  again,  but  from  that  sleep 
there  was  a  waking  long  ago.  And  nothing  more  clearly 
illustrates  the  unity  of  the  world  than  the  oneness  of  the 
forces  which  are  moving  to-day  in  the  life  of  the  East  and 
the  West  alike.  I  travelled  through  these  lands  in  the 
early  months  of  the  war,  which  was  ten  thousand  miles 
away,  but  we  saw  the  effects  of  the  war  in  every  country 
to  which  we  went  and  realized  clearly  the  truth  of 
what  Mr.  Paish  of  The  London  Statist  wrote  some 
years  ago  of  the  economic  community  which  the  whole 
world  has  now  become :  "  In  fact,"  said  he,  "  there  is  no 
nation  or  people  or  individual  which  is  not  affected  bene- 
ficially or  prejudicially  by  the  welfare  or  misfortune  of 
all  the  world.  A  disaster  from  earthquake,  from  disease, 
from  drought,  from  war,  which  falls  upon  any  nation 
in  these  days  affects  the  welfare  of  the  whole  world  in 
greater  or  less  degree,  and  on  the  other  hand  the  prog- 
ress of  thought,  the  spread  of  education,  the  advance  of 
invention,  the  growth  of  production,  and,  indeed,  all 
things  which  raise  the  moral  and  material  welfare  of  any 
nation,  bring  in  their  train  advantages  to  the  whole  race. 

274 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    275 

Experience  of  the  benefits  of  the  increasing  dependence 
of  nation  upon  nation,  which  has  been  gained  in  the  last 
century  from  the  removal  of  the  physical  barriers  which 
used  to  divide  them,  and  from  the  supply  of  capital  by 
one  country  to  another,  affords  some  idea  of  the  great 
well-being  to  which  the  whole  world  will  attain  in  the 
years  that  are  yet  to  come  from  the  ever  growing  move- 
ment toward  the  economic  unity  of  the  race." 

Back  of  this  economic  unity  lies  the  great  fact  of  the 
moral  unity  of  mankind.  Once  denied  in  theory  and  still 
often  repudiated  in  practice,  this  truth  is  nevertheless 
making  itself  realized  in  every  nation.  In  collision  with 
it  conceptions  of  ethnic  religion,  of  zonal  ethics,  utterly 
break  down.  If  humanity  is  one,  it  must  go  on  to  find  the 
one  truth  which  can  satisfy  its  deepest  needs  and  guide 
to  its  largest  destiny.  The  whole  movement  of  the 
world's  life  to-day  toward  a  deeper  consciousness  of  its 
oneness  is  both  a  preparation  and  a  search  for  Christian- 
ity. It  makes  a  League  of  Nations  an  absolute  essential 
agency  of  humanity. 

The  idea  that  America  is  the  great  melting  pot  of  the 
nations  needs  supplementing  in  the  light  of  the  facts  of 
other  lands.  New  York  is  indeed  a  great  maelstrom  of 
the  races  but  they  are  almost  exclusively  the  Western 
races.  Honolulu  presents  an  even  more  wonderful  lab- 
oratory of  racial  intermixture  with  its  population  of  26,- 
041  Hawaiians,  3,734  Asiatic  Hawaiians,  8,772  Caucasian 
Hawaiians,  21,674  Chinese,  79,674  Japanese,  22,303  Por- 
tuguese, 1,990  Spanish,  4,890  Porto  Ricans,  695  Blacks 
and  Mulattos,  14,867  other  Caucasians,  and  7,269  miscel- 
laneous. The  Malay  peninsula  is  another  crossroads  of 
the  races.  Here  11,065  Europeans,  10,807  Eurasians, 
1,412,196  Malays,  915,883  Chinese,  267,170  Indians,  and 
32,849  from  other  races  are  poured  in  to  one  of  the  great- 


276     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

est  whirlpools  of  racial  cross-breeding  that  can  be  found 
on  the  earth.  A  common  language,  unified  communica- 
tions and  the  strengthened  national  life  are  drawing  to- 
gether a  dozen  different  racial  strains  in  the  Philippines. 
The  Japanese  and  Koreans  have  been  engaged  in  an 
enormous  racial  inter-blending  adopted  as  a  deliberate 
governmental  policy.  In  Bangkok  one-fourth  of  the  pop- 
ulation is  Chinese  and  that  population  does  not  mark  the 
limit  of  Chinese  blood  in  the  city.  In  addition  there  is 
a  large  population  of  Indians  and  Malays,  and  there  are 
Burmese  and  Shans,  Eurasians,  Cambodians,  Laotians, 
Annamites,  Javanese,  Japanese,  and  a  dozen  Western 
nationalities.  The  isolation  of  the  races  has  passed  away. 
Not  only  are  ideas  running  across  the  world  contemptu- 
ous of  all  national  boundaries,  but  the  racial  bloods  seem 
to  be  flowing  to  a  common  level. 

The  deeply  impressive  fact  as  one  views  all  this  move- 
ment in  Asia  to-day  is  that  the  movement  is  not  the  enter- 
prise of  individuals.  Individuals  are  borne  on  the  move- 
ment. What  one  feels  is  the  heave  of  a  mighty  tide  of 
life  moving  through  the  world,  greater  than  men,  greater 
than  nations,  bearing  men  and  nations  onward  in  the 
grip  of  great  forces  that  clearly  have  an  order  within 
them  and  a  purpose  to  fulfill.  Both  men  and  governments 
seem  to  be  like  playthings  in  the  hands  of  these  unseen 
energies.  Economic  facts  are  much  stronger  than  men, 
and  the  man  must  be  blind  who  cannot  see  that  back  of 
these  economic  facts,  and  handling  them  with  a  wisdom 
and  a  will  that  are  absolute,  stands  God.  As  Mr.  Outer- 
bridge  said  once  in  a  paper  on  shipping  and  its  influence 
upon  international  unity,  "  So  irresistible  are  the  unseen 
forces  bringing  to  the  surface  more  enlightened  views  as 
more  difficult  conditions  arise,  that  it  suggests  the  ques- 
tion— whether  the  all-wise  Creator  is  not  using  economic 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    277 

law  and  necessity  as  one  of  the  greatest  fundamental 
forces  in  uplifting  the  moral  character  and  mental  vision 
of  humanity." 

It  is  increasingly  clear  that  in  this  great  process  of 
progress  those  races  will  be  able  to  serve  best  and  con- 
tribute most  which  can  bring  into  the  common  treasure 
the  best  character  and  the  purest  faith.  It  is  the  want 
of  character  or  of  those  qualities  of  character  which 
make  living  progress  possible  which  is  holding  back  the 
Asiatic  races.  In  some  qualities  of  character  they  sur- 
pass the  Western  nations  but  not  in  the  qualities  that 
contribute  to  living  progress.  In  those  qualities  perhaps 
the  character  of  India  is  most  deficient,  so  that  Mr. 
Dickinson's  remark  is  justified,  that  India  has  more  to 
gain  and  less  to  lose  in  the  contact  with  Western  people 
than  any  other  Asiatic  nation.  But  increasingly  all  the 
peoples  of  Asia  are  beginning  to  feel  their  need  of  the 
constructive  and  collective  principles  of  life  which  are 
sweeping  the  world  onward  under  the  leadership  of  the 
Western  races  and  which  have  the  purest  fountain  of 
their  virtues  and  the  best  corrective  of  their  vices  in 
Christianity.  Yuan  Shi  Kai  is  reported  to  have  said,  "  I 
am  not  a  Christian,  I  am  a  Confucianist,  but  unless  the 
ethics  of  Christianity  shall  dominate  the  scholarship  of 
China,  there  is  no  hope  for  the  Republic."  It  is  not  a 
question  of  domination  merely.  The  real  problem  is  one 
of  energization  and  it  Is  not  a  matter  of  Chinese  scholar- 
ship alone  but  of  Asiatic  character. 

It  is  not  personal  character  alone  that  is  needed,  al- 
though that  is  the  fundamental  thing.  It  is  personal 
character  so  generalized  and  massed  that  it  can  function 
through  a  national  consciousness.  The  Eastern  nations 
are  becoming  aware  of  this  also,  and  at  the  same  time 
that  they  have  to  find  the  springs  at  which  individual 


278     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

character  can  be  formed,  they  must  build  the  sense  of 
national  personality,  which  can  only  be  built  out  of  a 
right  racial  character,  in  which  the  virtue  of  personal 
and  family  life  is  collectively  massed.  Some  of  the 
Asiatic  nations  are  in  danger  of  thinking  that  the  na- 
tional personality  can  be  developed  by  itself,  but  most  of 
them  are  realizing  that  the  two  must  come  together. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  some  of  these  peoples  who 
are  struggling  so  hard  to  develop  a  national  consciousness, 
are  slow  in  rising  to  the  thought  of  that  higher  nation- 
ality for  which  our  small  present  political  nationalisms  are 
but  the  preparation.  And  every  Western  example  which 
sets  the  nation  above  humanity  is  a  blow  at  the  processes 
of  progress  in  Asia  and  sets  back  the  slow  struggle  of  the 
Asiatic  nations  out  of  their  isolation  into  the  larger  fel- 
lowship and  ministry  of  mankind. 

Nothing  is  more  important  than  that  we  should  stimu- 
late the  faith  and  courage  of  the  Asiatic  nations  in  their 
struggle.  It  is  pitiful  to  see  an  individual  man  who  has 
lost  the  hope  that  he  can  ever  attain  or  achieve.  It  is 
yet  more  pitiful  to  see  a  nation  which  has  begun  to 
despair.  "  I  sometimes  wonder,"  said  an  able  Indian 
who  had  been  educated  in  Great  Britain,  "  whether  it 
will  ever  be  possible  for  us  to  do  it.  We  can  see  the 
goal  but  we  seem  to  lack  the  nerve  to  win  it."  It  is  a 
dreadful  thing  when  this  mood  creeps  from  individuals 
into  the  consciousness  of  a  race.  We  ought  to  do  every- 
thing in  our  power  to  build  up  instead  the  spirit  of  hope 
and  boundless  confidence  in  every  race;  not  that  it  can 
do  everything  that  every  other  race  can  do, — our  Western 
races  are  utterly  unequal  among  themselves, — but  it  must 
be  made  to  feel  that  it  can  make  its  contribution  and  do 
its  work  and  that  no  other  race  can  fulfill  its  mission  for 
it.     Anything  that  we  do  in  trying  to  help  the  Eastern 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    279 

races,  either  governmentally,  educationally,  or  through  re- 
ligion, will  be  an  injury  to  them  and  an  offense  to  the 
boundlessly  hopeful  and  trustful  Spirit  of  God,  if  it  re- 
sults in  undermining  the  right  ambitions  and  the  just  pride 
of  Eastern  peoples.  If,  sometimes,  these  ambitions  ap- 
pear to  us  excessive  and  this  pride,  a  foolish  thing,  we 
ought  still  to  rejoice  that  they  are  erring  on  that  side 
instead  of  on  the  side  of  a  craven  acceptance  of  the 
doctrine  of  their  inferiority.  I  think  there  is  a  principle 
here  which  we  need  to  keep  much  more  clearly  in  view, 
and  which  has  its  large  bearing  on  such  problems  as  the 
teaching  in  English  in  Chinese  schools  and  the  develop- 
ment of  independence  in  the  native  churches. 

At  this  time  of  increasing  intimacy  of  racial  relation- 
ships and  of  overwrought  racial  suspicion,  it  is  the  duty 
of  Christian  men  and  especially  of  the  missionary  enter- 
prise to  set  an  example  of  just  and  generous  race  judg- 
ment. It  is  often  necessary  to  form  our  minds  and  to 
express  them  on  the  subject  of  particular  acts,  but  it  is 
a  dangerous  thing  to  extend  these  judgments  on  acts 
into  judgments  on  racial  character  or  national  purpose. 
The  present  governments  in  the  Far  East  have  as  much 
claim  to  purposes  of  good  faith  as  any  other  govern- 
ments and  we  ought  to  judge  them  precisely  as  we  would 
wish  to  be  judged  ourselves.  To  condemn  them  because 
they  are  Oriental,  to  express  of  them  a  distrust  which  we 
do  not  feel  toward  Western  governments  "  because  these 
are  white  men*s  governments,"  is  not  only  un-Christian,  it 
is  foolish  and  wrong.  In  his  "  Fifteen  Decisive  Battles 
of  the  World,"  in  the  chapter  on  the  victory  of  the  Amer- 
icans at  Saratoga,  Creasy  wrote,  "  The  importance  of  the 
power  of  the  United  States  being  then  firmly  planted 
along  the  Pacific  applies  not  only  to  the  New  World,  but 
to  the  Old.    Opposite  to  San  Francisco,  on  the  coast  of 


280     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

that  ocean,  lie  the  wealthy  but  decrepit  empires  of  China 
and  Japan.  Numerous  groups  of  islets  stud  the  larger 
part  of  the  intervening  sea,  and  form  convenient  stepping- 
stones  for  the  progress  of  commerce  or  ambition.  The 
intercourse  of  traffic  between  these  ancient  Asiatic  mon- 
archies, and  the  young  Anglo-American  Republic,  must 
be  rapid  and  extensive.  Any  attempt  of  the  Chinese  or 
Japanese  rulers  to  check  it,  will  only  accelerate  an  armed 
collision.  The  American  will  either  buy  or  force  his 
way.  Between  such  populations  as  that  of  China  and 
Japan  on  the  one  side,  and  that  of  the  United  States  on 
the  other — the  former  haughty,  formal,  and  insolent ;  the 
latter  bold,  intrusive,  and  unscrupulous — causes  of  quar- 
rel must,  sooner  or  later,  arise.  The  results  of  such  a 
quarrel  cannot  be  doubted.  America  will  scarcely  imi- 
tate the  forbearance  shown  by  England  at  the  end  of  our 
late  war  with  the  Celestial  Empire ;  and  the  conquests  of 
China  and  Japan  by  the  fleets  and  armies  of  the  United 
States,  are  events  which  many  now  living  are  likely  to 
witness.  Compared  with  the  magnitude  of  such  changes 
in  dominion  of  the  Old  World,  the  certain  ascendance  of 
the  Anglo-Americans  over  Central  and  Southern  Amer- 
ica, seems  a  matter  of  secondary  importance.  Well  may 
we  repeat  De  Tocqueville's  words,  that  the  growing 
power  of  this  commonwealth  is  *  Un  fait  entierement 
nouveau  dans  le  monde,  et  dont  I'imagination  elle-meme 
ne  saurait  saisir  la  partee.' " 

To  this  paragraph  in  the  text  Creasy  added  the  fol- 
lowing footnote,  "  These  remarks  were  written  in  May, 
185 1,  and  now,  in  May,  1852,  a  powerful  squadron  of 
American  war-steamers  has  been  sent  to  Japan,  for  the 
ostensible  purpose  of  securing  protection  for  the  crews 
of  American  vessels  shipwrecked  on  the  Japanese  coasts, 
but  also  evidently  for  important  ulterior  purposes."    This 


THE  RELATI0:N^S  of  east  and  west    281 

was  the  interpretation  which  one  of  the  noblest-minded 
historians  of  his  time  placed  upon  Commodore  Perry's 
expedition  to  Japan,  Whatever  we  may  think  of  this 
judgment  of  Creasy 's  we  ought  to  think  regarding  simi- 
lar judgments  of  our  own.  Now  and  then  a  nation  may 
have  a  government  so  bad  that  it  deserves  to  be  called 
wholly  bad,  but  no  nation  was  ever  as  bad  as  that,  and 
Christians  are  the  last  people  in  the  world  who  are  justi- 
fied in  forming  or  expressing  an  indiscriminate  judg- 
ment of  suspicion  or  condemnation  against  any  race. 
We  ought  to  credit  every  race  with  a  better  character 
than  it  has.  We  ought  to  hold  for  it  a  higher  and  nobler 
faith  than  it  can  hold  for  itself  until  it  becomes  a  Chris- 
tian race.  It  was  by  His  belief  in  possibilities  of  human 
character  which  were  not  actual  that  Jesus  Christ  made 
them  actual.  The  faith  of  the  missionary  enterprise  in 
the  races  for  whom  it  works  should  be  as  the  faith  of 
Christ  in  men  and  in  man. 

"  Why  what  but  faith,  do  we  abhor 
And  idolize  each  other  for — 
Faith  in  our  evil  or  our  good. 
Which  is  or  is  not  understood 
Aright  by  those  we  love  or  those 
We  hate,  thence  called  our  friends  or  foes." 

2.  These  general  reflections  have  a  deeper  significance 
for  missions  than  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  further, 
but  one  other  word  should  be  said  regarding  the  place  of 
missions  as  a  force  in  this  movement  of  human  progress. 
Government,  trade,  education  and  religion  are  the  four 
great  agencies  which  are  at  work  in  this  process.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  say  which  of  them  is  the  more  powerful, 
because  the  principles  and  spirit  of  true  religion  should 
pervade  them  all.  And  yet  we  do  believe  that  the  work 
which  religion  is  to  do  is  the  most  important  work  of 


282     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

all  and  those  men  and  women  who  go  with  their  lives 
and  the  example  of  their  homes,  to  live  among  the  non- 
Christian  nations,  to  teach  them  new  truth  and  to  in- 
carnate that  truth  before  them  in  individual  character,  in 
the  fundamental  social  institution  of  the  family  and  in  the 
life  of  the  community,  are  the  greatest  facts  of  prog- 
ress and  are  using  the  most  fundamental  and  effective 
method.  They  represent  in  the  purest  form  the  truth 
of  which  in  its  political  correlations,  Professor  Reinsch 
speaks  in  his  book  on  "  Colonial  Government,"  "  The 
idea  that  a  numerous  population,  covering  large  terri- 
tories, cannot  be  by  political  means  raised  en  masse  to 
a  higher  stage  of  development,  and  that,  if  political  and 
social  progress  is  to  come  about  in  such  regions,  the 
advanced  methods  and  institutions  must  first  be  worked 
out  in  smaller  areas,  in  cities  and  towns,  which  may  thus 
become  a  model  to  the  surrounding  country, — this  idea  is 
based  on  the  soundest  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  politics. 
To  civilize  by  bayonets,  to  educate  by  force,  to  render 
moral  by  laws, — these  are  all  Utopian  notions,  although 
they  appear  under  a  strangely  un-Utopian  guise.  Peo- 
ples, like  individuals,  can  be  deeply  and  permanently  in- 
fluenced only  through  a  more  quiet,  less  obtrusive,  appeal 
to  their  inner  nature  by  example.  It  may  be  the  example 
of  righteous  living,  or  the  example  of  efficient  methods 
in  political  administration  and  in  industry.  Industrial 
example  has  done  more  to  transform  the  Orient  in  the 
last  decade  than  has  all  the  political  action  of  centuries. 
To  impose  upon  a  backward  people  institutions  excellent 
in  our  eyes,  but  for  which  its  historic  experience  has  not 
as  yet  fitted  it,  is  vanity  and  folly ;  to  give  within  a  limited 
sphere  and  area  the  example  of  correct  methods  and 
honest  work,  would  seem  an  approach  to  a  statesmanlike 
policy." 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    283 

The  work  that  missions  are  doing  and  the  mere  pres- 
ence of  missionaries,  especially  if  they  are  American 
missionaries,  in  any  field  exert  influence  far  beyond  our 
understanding.  Most  of  this  influence  is  just  what  we 
would  wish  it  to  be,  but  some  of  it  perhaps,  with  or  with- 
out our  knowledge,  takes  forms  that  we  might  not  have 
desired  to  give  to  it.  In  one  sense,  of  course,  all  this 
can  be  left  to  that  great  energy  of  hfe  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  which  is  working  in  the  world  and  which  sweeps 
along  the  endeavours  of  men  toward  the  great  ends  of 
God,  but  nevertheless  we  are  not  excused  from  the  duty 
of  perpetually  scrutinizing  our  influence  to  see  if  in  any 
regard  we  can  strip  it  of  elements  of  weakness  and  bring 
it  more  fully  into  accord  with  the  central  and  untram- 
melled spirit  of  the  Gospel.  We  cannot  go  out  as  other 
than  American  missionaries.  What  we  are,  we  are.  But 
we  certainly  can  strive  to  lay  aside  our  Americanism  and 
to  appear,  instead,  as  catholic  men  representing  the  uni- 
versal Gospel.  Certainly  we  can  avoid  the  folly  of  Fourth 
of  July  celebrations  in  mission  schools.  We  can  use  the 
national  flag  rather  than  our  own.  We  can  refrain  from 
teaching  history  with  too  much  of  the  American  accent. 
We  can  remember  that  it  is  the  Gospel  that  was  pro- 
claimed in  Palestine  and  not  an  American  version  of  it 
that  we  are  to  carry,  and  that  our  business  is  to  help  the 
races  to  which  we  have  gone  to  achieve  a  character  that 
is  all  their  own.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  It  is  proclaimed 
in  China  and  throughout  the  world  that  American  mis- 
sion schools  produce  republics,  we  can  only  wonder  that 
there  is  not  less  unrest  In  neighbouring  lands  with  re- 
gard to  what  we  are  doing  there.  We  must  make  it 
clear  that  we  are  not  an  agency  for  the  dissemination  of 
political  Ideas  but  are  ministers  to  the  racial  character  and 
nationality  to  which  we  go. 


284     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

No  enterprise  is  more  in  need  of  calmness,  of  patience, 
of  steady  ability  to  hold  the  perspective,  of  clear  discern- 
ment of  the  large  and  distant,  not  to  be  lost  in  the  small 
and  near.  Missions  ought  not  to  be  rushed  into  pre- 
cipitate action,  specially  in  that  border  land  where  the 
problems  of  missions  and  the  problems  of  government 
interlace.  The  Church  of  Christ  has  time,  all  the  time 
there  is,  and  while  she  needs  to  be  in  haste  in  her  own 
work,  she  can  afford  to  wait  indefinitely  for  the  settle- 
ment of  any  problem  which  she  cannot  settle  on  the  spot 
by  love  and  faith. 

The  central  elemental  agency  of  missions  is  the  body 
of  missionaries.  After  we  have  recognized  all  that  God 
will  do  in  spite  of  the  men  He  uses  and  all  that  the  Church 
may  do  by  prayer  through  any  agents  she  may  send  out, 
it  remains  true  that  the  work  will  be  stronger  or  weaker 
in  proportion  to  the  quality  of  the  men  and  women  who 
are  doing  it.  It  is  because  the  missionaries  represent  the 
standard  of  character  and  devotion  and  ability  which 
they  do,  that  it  is  such  a  privilege  and  inspiration  to  visit 
the  mission  field.  But  the  strongest  missionaries  wish 
they  were  still  stronger  and  long  for  a  larger  reinforce- 
ment of  yet  stronger  recruits  from  home.  The  mission- 
ary boards  are  justified  accordingly,  in  maintaining  high 
requirements  for  missionary  appointments,  in  seeking  to 
secure  improved  training,  in  resisting  the  acceptance  of 
low  ideals  of  education  and  of  power.  But  how  are 
strong  men  and  women  to  be  found  and  how  can  they 
be  identified?  Many  of  those  who  think  themselves 
strong  turn  out  to  be  the  weakest  and  candidates  highly 
praised  in  their  testimonials  may  prove  far  inferior  to 
other  candidates  whose  qualities  had  made  themselves 
less  conspicuous.  Furthermore  the  most  essential  quali- 
ties are  those  which  it  is  most  difficult  to  determine.    It 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    285 

is  evident  that  neither  education  nor  training  nor  experi- 
ence at  home  can  guarantee  efficiency  on  the  field.  Effi- 
ciency depends  rather  on  the  balance  of  personality,  the 
poise  of  spirit,  the  correlation  of  energy  and  judgment 
within,  and  of  both  of  these  to  the  task  without. 

3.  It  becomes  ever  more  evident  that  the  Christian 
Church  is  the  fundamental  institution  in  the  missionary 
enterprise,  and  that  the  establishment  of  a  real  church 
with  its  own  life  and  government,  unsubsidized  and  un- 
directed, but  standing  on  its  own  feet  and  cooperating 
with  us  or  making  a  place  for  us  to  cooperate  with  it, 
should  be  the  normative  principle  of  mission  policy. 
Missions  should  aim  to  build  up  local  congregations  and 
unite  these  in  national  churches,  and  in  a  field  where  sev- 
eral denominations  are  at  work,  the  churches  which  they 
all  establish  should  be  united  from  the  beginning  as  they 
have  been  in  the  Philippine  Islands,  nominally,  and  as 
they  ought  to  be  organically.  If  this  is  not  done  at  the 
beginning  the  present  conditions  in  Japan  will  suffice  to 
show  how  difficult,  if  not  Impossible,  it  is  to  do  it  later 
on.  The  non-Christian  peoples  are  well  experienced  in 
religious  sectarianism.  There  was  complaint  when  we 
were  last  in  Japan  from  fifty  odd  Buddhist  sects  and  a 
dozen  or  more  Shinto  sects  because  only  one  of  each  was 
to  be  represented  at  the  coronation.  If  we  once  establish 
our  separate  denominations  in  the  mission  field,  custom, 
natural  affection,  vested  interests,  the  desire  of  institu- 
tions to  preserve  their  integrity,  and  all  the  human  mo- 
tives which  enter  into  the  maintenance  of  our  divisions 
at  home,  will  come  into  play.  And  worst  of  all  the 
voice  of  the  Church  will  be  a  divided  voice  and  Chris- 
tianity will  not  be  able  to  make  itself  felt  as  it  would 
through  a  strong  united  life  testifying  by  its  unity  and 
its  love  to  the  possibility  of  those  very  things  for  which 


286     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOBLD 

each  nation  is  seeking  and  which  it  can  reaUze  only 
through  its  full  surrender  to  God  in  Christ. 

Because  the  Church  is  so  central  and  important  every 
effort  should  be  made  to  give  it  right  character  and  to 
see  that  it  is  made  up  of  true  Christian  men  and  women. 
Doubtless  the  Christian  faith  and  character  of  its  mem- 
bers will  be  very  immature  at  the  beginning.  That  is  all 
the  more  reason  for  making  sure  that  what  there  is  is 
real  and  for  providing  agencies  for  the  education  and 
development  of  the  Church.  There  are  some  of  our 
missions  which  would  do  well  to  give  careful  heed  to  an 
article  in  the  International  Review  of  Missions  for 
July,  191 5,  by  Johannes  Johnson  entitled  "  The  Impor- 
tance of  the  Catechumenate  "  from  which  a  few  sentences 
may  be  quoted : 

"  It  is  difficult  for  a  native  to  withstand  the  pressure 
exercised  upon  him  by  impatient  catechumens,  and  the 
fear  of  losing  them  through  too  strict  an  adherence  to 
the  severe  rules  of  his  pastoral  instructions.  Moreover, 
a  great  many  of  the  catechumens  have  not  been  taught  by 
himself,  but  by  assistant  catechists  whom  he  does  not 
want  to  hurt;  fear  of  man,  regard  of  public  favour, 
weakness  of  character,  are  indeed  more  common  faults 
among  the  young  Christian  churches  of  our  mission  fields 
than  in  the  older  Christian  communities.  ...  In 
1906,  the  year  in  which  all  the  missions  lost  most  of 
their  schools,  and  the  colonial  Government  took  up  a 
decidedly  anti-religious  attitude,  lasting  till  1910,  we 
determined  to  introduce  into  our  work  a  series  of  special 
rules  regarding  the  teaching  of  catechumens.  The  most 
important  provisions  were : 

"  I.  It  was  laid  down  that  those  desiring  to  become 
catechumens  must  be  admitted  to  the  catechumenate 
through  a  public  act  before  the  congregation  where  they 
attended,  and  their  names  entered  on  a  register  in  which 
their  attendance  at  the  catechumens'  class  was  also  re- 
corded. 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    287 

"  2.  The  time  of  instruction  and  probation  was  regu- 
lated in  a  way  that  in  most  instances  brought  the  cate- 
chumenate  up  to  about  one  year. 

"  3.  Nobody  could  be  baptized  without  the  approba- 
tion of  the  congregation  of  the  place  where  he  lived  and 
the  members  of  which  had  seen  him  during  the  time  of 
the  catechumenate.     .     .     . 

"  In  my  different  classes  through  many  years  only 
about  one-third  of  the  catechumens  actually  reached  bap- 
tism as  members  of  the  class  which  they  joined  in  the 
first  instance.  Two-thirds  dropped  away,  sometimes  for 
good,  sometimes  to  return  after  a  year  or  two,  or  even 
later.  The  most  common  reasons  for  falling  away,  as 
far  as  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain,  were  three:  first, 
their  wish  to  become  Christians  was  not  serious  at  all, 
they  therefore  soon  lost  patience,  found  the  teaching  too 
trying  in  its  regularity  and  their  other  occupations  too 
important;  secondly,  they  were  not  able  to  give  up  the 
heathen  life — to  enter  into  a  regular  marriage  or  to  give 
up  heathen  customs  of  burial,  etc.,  proved  too  heavy  for 
them ;  thirdly,  they  found  it  hard  to  accept  our  condition 
that  they  should  join  in  supporting  their  church.     .     .     . 

"  If  the  missions  and  the  native  churches  neglect  this 
question,  if  they  allow  indiscriminate  baptism  and  think 
that  restrictions  and  the  catechumenate  in  any  thorough 
form  should  be  reserved  only  for  admission  to  first  com- 
munion, they  are  sure  to  create  in  all  heathen  lands  the 
same  kind  of  baptized  heathenism  under  which  the  west- 
ern world  is  suffering.  Perhaps  the  least  of  the  evils  to 
which  this  will  lead  is  the  disdain,  disparagement  and 
neglect  of  Christian  baptism  which  at  present  is  spreading 
over  all  the  Christian  Church.     .     .     . 

"  How  our  Lord  is  going  to  shape  the  future  history 
of  the  Church  is  His  matter.  But  our  concern  and  duty 
is  at  every  turn  of  our  way  to  do  the  right  thing.  It  is 
only  by  so  doing  that  we  can  be  used  by  Him  to  create 
a  sound  method  for  the  progress  of  His  kingdom.  Now 
in  this  matter  His  clear  order  from  the  beginning  has 
been  that  we  should  baptize  those  who  sincerely  want  to 
be  His  disciples.  The  only  possible  way  to  ascertain 
whether  this  state  of  mind  exists  is  to  have  a  solid  cate- 


288     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

chumenate  before  baptism.  When  we  have  done  this, 
we  shall  be  able  to  see  later  what  the  Lord  is  going  to 
do.  For  my  part,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  a  strong 
catechumenate  and  a  regular  baptism  of  adults  is  the 
elementary  condition  of  every  sound  church  and  should 
never  have  been  abandoned  in  the  churches  of  the  West." 

Many  missionaries  feel  this  same  problem.  Dr.  Eakin, 
of  Petchaburi,  has  written  regarding  it  in  Siam :  "  Our 
chief  concern  is  for  the  hundreds  of  professed  believers 
who  are  pressing  for  baptism,  and  we  are  not  able  to  give 
them  the  needed  instruction.  Many  of  them  have  been 
waiting  for  two  or  three  years  since  first  they  professed 
to  accept  Christ  as  their  Saviour  and  Lord.  I  can  visit 
them  only  about  once  a  year  and  only  for  a  day  or  two 
at  a  time.  Our  evangelists  are  well  equipped  to  do 
pioneer  work,  but  are  hardly  equal  to  the  task  of  prepar- 
ing inquirers  for  baptism.  I  have  to  care  for  five 
churches  and  sixty  groups  of  inquirers  numbering  more 
than  a  thousand  souls. 

"  The  Lord  is  doing  great  things  for  us,  whereof  we 
are  glad;  but  I  find  it  difficult  to  keep  from  feeling 
anxious  lest  we  build  with  untempered  mortar,  and  the 
consequences  will  be  disastrous.  We  are  trying  to  give 
our  time  and  strength  to  intensive  work ;  but  we  find  new 
converts  at  every  turn  who  wish  to  be  enrolled  as  be- 
lievers. To  baptize  them  in  a  year  or  so  with  little  in- 
struction seems  a  great  risk  in  view  of  the  isolation  and 
the  pressure  of  heathen  environment." 

And  such  adequate  educational  training  of  catechu- 
mens should  be  maintained  systematically  in  the  case  of 
church  members  and  made  an  agency  of  training  of  the 
Church  in  ceaseless  evangelistic  work. 

And  the  greatest  need  of  the  churcMes  and  the  missions 
is,  I  believe,  a  sustained  and  glowing  evangelism.    The 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AI^D  WEST    289 

equipment  of  the  missions  is  not  everywhere  adequate, 
and  those  who  cannot  serve  the  work  abroad  otherwise 
than  by  giving  their  money  at  home  to  provide  more 
equipment,  have  an  ample  field  still  open  to  them.  But 
the  primary  need  of  the  mission  work  is  not  more  equip- 
ment, it  is  for  more  evangelistic  energies  coursing  through 
the  equipment  that  we  have,  the  schools,  and  the  hos- 
pitals, and  the  chapels  and  church  buildings.  Regarding 
the  moral  and  the  social  results  of  missions  there  can  be 
no  doubt.  Those  who  object  to  missions  because  they 
are  ineffective  in  influencing  society,  choose  the  weakest 
point  of  attack.  The  point  at  which  Christians  who  be- 
lieve in  missions  are  least  satisfied,  is  in  the  matter  of  the 
drive,  the  persistence,  the  patience,  the  longing,  of  the 
evangelistic  work  and  of  all  our  work  in  its  evangelistic 
utilization.  We  are  further  away,  it  seems  to  me,  from 
the  accomplishment  of  our  aim  of  evangelization,  than 
from  the  accomplishment  of  any  of  our  other  missionary 
aims.  A  wise  and  thoughtful  writer  in  an  article  on  the 
relation  of  missions  to  civilization  in  the  International 
Reviezv  of  Missions  for  July,  191 3,  said,  "  It  would  ap- 
pear that  the  mere  process  of  evangelization,  the  mere 
making  known  of  the  message  concerning  God  in  Christ 
to  the  world,  is  a  task  now  nearly  accomplished."  Would 
that  one  could  believe  this !  No  one  could  be  where  we 
have  been  and  not  be  constrained  to  think  that  instead  of 
being  nearly  accomplished,  the  task  had  been  scarcely 
begun.  It  is  the  long,  long  work.  No  one  can  tell  when 
it  will  be  done.  It  is  the  magnitude  and  the  endlessness 
of  it  that  appall  one  and  make  it  difficult  to  awaken  and 
to  keep  at  ruddy  glow  the  evangelistic  fervour. 

4.  Whether  the  number  of  Europeans  in  Asia  will 
greatly  increase  in  the  near  future  is  a  matter  of  un- 
certainty.    Much  of  the  work  for  which  the  Eastern 


290     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

nations  have  been  obliged  to  employ  Europeans  will  be 
done  by  Asiatics,  There  are  many  European  commercial 
communities  in  the  Far  East  which  have  not  grown,  the 
increase  of  business  having  been  brought  about  by  the 
entrance  of  Asiatic  traders  into  the  field.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  steady  unification  of  the  world  throws  the 
shuttles  of  race  ever  to  and  fro  across  the  web  of  life 
and  there  may  be  a  steady  or  a  spasmodic  increase  of 
foreigners  in  the  East.  It  is  most  important  both  to  the 
East  and  to  the  West  that  the  moral  character  and  in- 
fluence of  this  element  should  be  helpful.  The  general 
testimony  is  that  it  is  increasingly  helpful.  Old  business 
men  in  a  city  like  Yokohama  ^testify  that  the  general  tone 
of  the  foreign  community  has  steadily  advanced  and 
that  while  in  these  communities,  as  everywhere  in  so- 
ciety, the  outstanding  individual  may  not  be  as  conspicu- 
ous as  he  was  when  a  few  great  merchants  largely  dom- 
inated this  field  of  trade,  nevertheless  the  average  has 
risen  and  the  moral  purity  of  life  become  more  creditable 
to  the  West  and  more  helpful  to  the  East.  Between  these 
European  communities  and  the  missionary  body  there  is 
in  general  now  a  much  better  feeling  and  understanding 
than  there  was  twenty-five  years  ago.  There  has  been  a 
return  to  the  good  spirit  of  the  earliest  days  when  men 
like  John  C.  Green  and  his  associates  founded  the  medical 
missionary  society  in  Canton  and  when  the  Oliphant  ships 
again  and  again  served  the  missionary  enterprise.  There 
is  still,  however,  a  great  work  to  be  done  in  recovering  the 
wreckage  of  European  life  in  Asia  and  in  awakening 
every  motive  that  may  protect  our  young  men  who  go 
to  Asia  on  business  from  sinking  down  to  the  basest 
levels  of  moral  life  about  them.  It  is  clear  that  racial 
self-respect  and  pride  of  racial  integrity  are  not  sufficient 
to  accomplish  this.     They  seem  to  be  very  superficial 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    291 

qualities.  Witness  the  horde  of  Eurasians  in  Asia  born 
of  the  very  men  who  are  loudest  in  their  boasts  of  these 
virtues.  As  a  British  newspaper  man  in  the  Straits  Set- 
tlements says,  "  The  British  have  a  pride  of  pure  race 
which  would  be  admirable  enough  if  it  kept  them  from 
all  intercourse  with  black,  brown,  or  yellow.  To  beget 
and  then  to  scorn  strikes  me  as  somewhat  abominable,  a 
crime,  in  fact,  against  nature."  The  Eurasian  is  one  of 
the  great  social  problems  of  the  East,  a  problem  which 
those  races  are  most  responsible  for  solving  which,  on 
the  father's  side,  produced  the  Eurasian.  Lord  Haldane 
has  spoken  in  several  of  his  speeches  of  Sir  Alfred  Ly- 
all's  poem  which  pictures  the  glorious  strength  of  race 
pride  in  lifting  a  man  above  moral  weakness :  "  The 
poem  is  called  '  Theology  in  Extremis,'  and  it  describes 
the  feelings  of  an  Englishman  who  had  been  taken 
prisoner  by  Mohametan  rebels  in  the  Indian  Mutiny.  He 
is  face  to  face  with  a  cruel  death.  They  offer  him  his 
life  if  he  will  repeat  something  from  the  Koran.  If  he 
complies,  no  one  is  likely  ever  to  hear  of  it,  and  he  will 
be  free  to  return  to  England  and  to  the  woman  he  loves. 
Moreover,  and  here  is  the  real  point,  he  is  not  a  believer 
in  Christianity,  so  that  it  is  no  question  of  denying  his 
Saviour.  What  ought  he  to  do?  Deliverance  is  easy, 
and  the  relief  and  advantage  would  be  unspeakably  great. 
But  he  does  not  really  hesitate  and  every  shadow  of 
doubt  disappears  when  he  hears  his  fellow  prisoner,  a 
half-caste,  pattering  eagerly  the  words  demanded:  He 
himself  has  no  hope  of  heaven  and  he  loves  life — 

"*  Yet  for  the  honour  of  En.g-lish  race 
May  I  not  live  or  endure  disgrace. 
Ay,  but  the  word  if  I  could  have  said  it, 
I  by  no  terrors  of  hell  perplext 
Hard  to  be  silent  and  have  no  credit 
From  men  in  this  world,  or  reward  in  the  next; 


292     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 


None  to  bear  witness  and  reckon  the  cost 

Of  the  name  that  is  saved  by  the  life  that  is  lost.- 

I  must  begone  to  the  crowd  untold 

Of  men  by  the  cause  which  they  served  unknown, 

Who  moulder  in  myriad  graves  of  old; 

Never  a  story  and  never  a  stone 

Tells  of  the  martyrs  who  die  like  me 

Just  for  the  pride  of  the  old  countree/  " 


This  pride  of  loyalty  to  the  best  moral  ideal  of  the  race 
does  suffice  to  hold  many  men  who  live  their  lonely  lives 
in  cleanness  or  who  honourably  marry  women  of  Asia 
and  leave  a  pure  inheritance  to  their  children.  A  large 
body  of  Eurasians  possess  this  pure  heritage.  But  the 
pride  of  race  fails  in  thousands  of  other  lives. 

Mere  environmental  religion  also  fails  and  one  is 
tempted  to  wonder  from  what  he  sees  in  these  lands,  how 
much  of  our  American  religion  is  integral  to  men  and 
how  much  is  merely  environmental.  All  along  our  way 
we  met  with  men  who  had  been  open  in  their  church  re- 
lationships at  home  and  sometimes  active  in  their  Chris- 
tian service,  from  whom  the  whole  thing  had  slipped 
away  as  a  garment  when  they  came  out  to  the  Far  East. 
There  must  be  something  more  than  racial  pride  or  bor- 
rowed religion  to  hold  men  true  and  to  make  them  strong 
to  render  moral  service  in  the  uplifting  of  the  East. 
They  need  the  iron  of  the  moral  law,  tempered  and 
forged  into  steel  in  the  furnace  of  the  love  of  Christ. 
And  if  they  are  to  be  held  to  all  that  is  best  and  highest 
when  they  come  out  to  the  East  they  need  to  ally  them- 
selves at  once  with  the  Christian  Church.  One  of  the 
best  informed  men  In  Manila  told  me  that  he  knew  of  no 
young  men  who  were  being  held  absolutely  faithful  to 
the  ideals  of  moral  purity  who  had  not  connected  them- 
selves with  the  Church  and  were  not  openly  identifying 
themselves  with  its  worship  and  its  work.    Among  Asi- 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    293 

atics  and  Europeans  alike,  the  indispensable  and  supreme 
agency  is  the  Christian  congregation. 

A  sad  but  curious  problem  arises  in  some  stations  in 
the  matter  of  the  duty  of  missionaries  toward  the  illegit- 
imate children  of  Europeans  or  Americans  who  are  re- 
turning home  from  Asia,  abandoning  their  offspring  but 
yet  desiring  to  make  some  provision  for  them.  In  some 
cases  missionaries  have  assumed  a  sort  of  guardianship  of 
such  children  and  have  received  remittances  from  home 
on  their  account.  The  little  children  are  not  responsible 
for  their  illegitimacy.  It  is  a  Christian  man's  duty  to  do 
all  that  he  can  to  help  such  little  ones,  but  on  the  other 
hand  it  puts  the  missionary  in  a  strange  situation,  to  be 
looked  to,  as  he  so  often  is,  to  take  up  such  responsibili- 
ties. His  acceptance  of  them  may  easily  lead  to  mis- 
understandings among  the  people.  It  would  seem  that 
no  fixed  rule  could  be  laid  down  but  that  such  situations 
call  for  a  great  deal  of  discretion  and  wise  judgment  on 
the  part  of  the  missionaries.  Certainly  one  cannot  with- 
hold his  deepest  sympathy  from  the  unfortunate  children. 
We  shall  never  forget  the  face  of  one  little  boy  that 
looked  up  at  us  from  the  front  row  of  one  of  our  schools 
in  Siam.  That  little  face  will  ever  be  an  undying  appeal 
for  compassion. 

5.  It  is  both  exhilarating  and  pitiful  to  see  the  eager- 
ness of  Asia  to  acquire  the  English  language.  It  is  ex- 
hilarating because  it  is  a  sign  of  the  hunger  of  the  world 
for  unity  and  for  a  common  speech,  because  it  reveals 
the  intellectual  awakening  of  Asia,  because  it  opens  to 
the  Asiatic  peoples  ranges  of  literature  and  knowledge 
otherwise  inaccessible,  because  language  is  a  living  thing 
with  an  indwelling  spirit  which  moulds  those  who  open 
themselves  to  it.  Their  own  languages  are  a  heavy 
burden  on  some  of  the  Asiatic  peoples.     The  Chinese 


294     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

ideographs,  which  Chinese  and  Japanese  must  learn,  lay 
a  task  of  drudgery  and  memorization  upon  the  young 
mind  which  is  crushing.  It  takes  years  for  a  Chinese 
child  to  learn  the  language  by  which  he  is  to  learn  other 
things.  Japanese  have  simplified  the  matter  a  great  deal 
by  the  "  kana  "  characters  which  are  a  sort  of  alphabet 
and  which  in  the  newspapers  are  printed  in  parallel 
columns  with  the  regular  characters.  There  is  a  strong 
movement  in  Japan  to  introduce  Romaji,  that  is,  to  sub- 
stitute for  the  characters  the  phonetic  sounds  expressed 
in  Roman  letters.  The  effort  to  introduce  this  reform 
in  China  and  Japan,  however,  meets  with  immensely 
greater  difficulties  than  our  reform  spelling  encounters  at 
home.  It  is  sad  to  reflect  that  in  Korea  the  cumbersome 
Japanese  language  has  sought  to  supplant  Korean  with 
its  wonderfully  simple  and  beautiful  alphabet,  and  that 
in  Siam  the  Siamese  letters  are  already  displacing  the  far 
more  beautiful  Lao. 

But  while  the  demand  for  English  is  exhilarating  there 
is  something  sad  about  it.  So  much  of  the  demand  is 
purely  commercial  and,  while  not  unworthily  so,  it  testi- 
fies to  the  dreadful  necessity  under  which  the  greater  part 
of  Asia  lies,  of  construing  all  the  values  of  Hfe  in  terms 
of  one  day's  bread.  It  is  sad  also  because  so  often  the 
eagerness  for  the  new  is  indiscriminate  and  what  is  trivial 
and  unworthy  is  taken  in  with  the  good,  while  that  which 
was  good  and  worthy  in  the  old  is  discarded  with  what 
was  useless  or  bad.  It  is  now  and  it  may  be  even  more 
in  the  future  the  duty  of  the  missionary  enterprise  to 
do  what  it  can  to  protect  the  Asiatic  people  from  them- 
selves and  to  help  them  to  conserve  the  good  of  their 
own  past  which  otherwise  they  would  throw  away.  Few 
greater  evils  could  befall  Asia  than  that  it  should  make 
the  mistake  of  excessive  imitation  of  Western  civiliza- 


THE  EELATIOI^S  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    295 

tion  in  its  present  form  or  that  it  should  impoverish 
the  stock  which  it  brings  for  the  reception  of  the  new- 
graft. 

6.     It  fills  one  with  wonder  to  see  the  way  in  which 
the  non-Christian  religions  are  undergoing  transforma- 
tion, in  their  tendency,  partly  conscious,  and  partly  un- 
conscious, to  slough  off  the  weaknesses  which  contact 
with  Christianity  has  revealed,  and  to  develop  whatever 
resemblances  they  may  have  to  Christianity,  and  to  bor- 
row from  it  so  far  as  they  can  what  it  possesses  and  they 
lack.     The  whole  tendency  brings  into  clearer  view  the 
things  that  are  strong  and  unique  in  the  Gospel.    It  may 
reveal  also  things  in  the  Gospel  that  we  had  not   so 
clearly  seen.    It  has  revealed  and  will  reveal  nothing  that 
the  Gospel  of  the  New  Testament,  understood  in  its  full- 
ness, lacks.     As  Dr.  Denny  says,  in  his  commentai-y  on 
II  Corinthians,  speaking  of  the  first  six  verses  of  the 
eleventh  chapter,  "  There  is  no  comparison  between  the 
Gospel  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ  His  Son  and  any  other 
religion.    The  science  of  comparative  religion  is  interest- 
ing as  a  science;  but  a  Christian  may  be  excused  for 
finding  the  religious  use  of  it  tiresome.    There  is  nothing 
true  in  any  of  the  religions  which  is  not  already  in  his 
possession.     He  never  finds  a  moral  idea,  a  law  of  the 
spiritual  life,  a  word  of  God,  in  any  of  them,  to  which 
he  cannot  immediately  offer  a  parallel,  far  more  simple 
and  penetrating,  from  the  revelation  of  Christ.    He  has 
no  interest  in  disparaging  the  light  by  which  millions  of 
his  fellow-creatures  have  walked,  generation  after  genera- 
tion, in  the  mysterious  providence  of  God;  but  he  sees 
no  reason  for  pretending  that  that  light— which  Scripture 
calls  darkness  and  the  shadow  of  death— can  bear  com- 
parison with  the  radiance  in  which  he  lives.     'If,'  he 
might  say,  misapplying  the  fourth  verse—'  if  they  brought 


296      THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

us  another  saviour,  another  spirit,  another  gospel,  we 
might  be  religiously  interested  in  them;  but,  as  it  is,  we 
have  everything  already,  and  they,  in  comparison,  have 
nothing/  The  same  remark  applies  to  '  theosophy,' 
'  spiritualism,'  and  other  *  gospels.'  It  will  be  time  to 
take  them  seriously  when  they  utter  one  wise  or  true 
word  on  God  or  the  soul  which  is  not  an  echo  of  some- 
thing in  the  old  familiar  Scriptures." 

This  absoluteness  of  Christianity  is  sometimes  con- 
strued by  us  in  exclusive  rather  than  inclusive  terms  and 
the  Gospel  that  has  sent  us  out  as  the  servants  of  men 
insensibly  operates  to  make  us  their  masters.  The  su- 
perior prowess  of  the  Western  peoples,  their  advance- 
ment in  knowledge,  their  mastery  of  applied  science,  the 
conscious  maturity  and  strength  of  their  political  judg- 
ments, the  too  ready  acknowledgment  of  their  weakness 
and  inability  on  the  part  of  the  Oriental  peoples,  the 
energy  of  Anglo-Saxon  character  against  inertia  or  in- 
efficiency, the  quasi-consular  status  which  extra-territori- 
ality  has  given  and  which  now  and  then  one  meets  a  mis- 
sionary who  is  reluctant  to  give  up  just  on  this  account, 
because  he  sincerely  believes  that  such  a  position  of 
superiority  increases  his  influence  as  a  representative  of 
the  Gospel, — these  and  many  other  things  make  it  diffi- 
cult to  keep  the  spirit  in  which  alone  Christ  can  be  truly 
represented  to  men  and  the  gospel  of  human  unity  pro- 
claimed. A  letter  from  a  missionary  in  China  states  the 
whole  matter  better  than  any  words  of  mine  can : 

"  Now  that  I  have  lived  for  some  years  in  the  Orient 
I  know  a  good  many  things  about  the  difficulties  of  mis- 
sionary work  that  I  did  not  know  before  coming  here. 
One  of  the  greatest  hindrances,  to  my  mind,  to  the  com- 
ing of  the  Kingdom  here  so  far  as  we  missionaries'  short- 
comings are  concerned,  is  the  feeling  of  race  superiority 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST    297 

or  arrogance  that  gradually  springs  up  in  a  foreigner's 
heart.  I  think  our  race  is  naturally  an  arrogant  race  and 
the  whole  circumstances  of  our  life  here  make  it  easy 
for  this  kind  of  feeling  to  take  possession  of  us.  I  mean 
such  things  as  extra-territoriality,  our  influence  simply 
because  we  are  foreigners,  the  lack  of  backbone  of  the 
Chinese,  the  knowledge  of  our  race's  achievements,  etc. 
As  I  have  tried  to  examine  my  own  heart  it  seems  to  me 
that  most  missionaries  go  through  the  same  experience. 
We  start  in  often  with  great  sympathy  for  the  people, 
trust  in  them  because  they  seem  so  open  and  attractive, 
but  gradually,  partly  through  disappointment  with  indi- 
viduals but  most  of  all  through  the  subtle  influence  of  a 
feeling  of  race  superiority  that  most  all  foreigners  in  the 
Orient  seem  to  have,  we  begin  to  put  up  a  barrier  be- 
tween ourselves  and  the  people  which  I  believe  to  be  a 
very  real  hindrance  to  the  spread  of  the  Gospel.  We 
do  not  so  openly  display  this  spirit  and  sometimes  we  are 
able  to  hide  it,  but  nevertheless  it  is  a  factor  to  be  dealt 
with.  I  don't  think  the  great  mass  of  the  people  realize 
that  the  missionaries  are  this  way,  but  I  think  the  edu- 
cated ones  often  see  it,  the  returned  students,  for  in- 
stance, and  it  is  a  real  hindrance.  Canon  Robinson  in  a 
little  book  entitled  *  The  Interpretation  of  the  Character 
of  Christ  to  Non-Christian  Races,'  expresses  what  I 
mean.  He  says  that  we  are  weak  on  the  side  of  patience, 
humility,  meekness,  non-resistance,  which  is  the  side  of 
the  Christian  character  which  particularly  appeals  to  the 
people  of  the  Orient.  I  find  that  the  mingling  of  this 
side  of  the  Christian  character  with  firmness,  honesty, 
justice,  the  hatred  of  hypocrisy  is  one  of  the  very  hardest 
problems  I  have  had  to  face.  As  soon  as  you  go  out  of 
your  way  to  be  kind,  and  try  to  treat  the  Chinese  as  you 
would  a  foreigner,  he  will  as  a  general  rule  take  ad- 
vantage of  it,  and  the  average  person  who  starts  in  with 
the  idea  of  treating  the  people  as  real  friends  and 
brothers  is  too  often  apt  to  give  up  this  attitude  unless 
he  is  completely  deceived  by  them  and  does  not  see 
through  their  exterior.  It  is  very  hard  to  express  in  a 
letter  just  what  I  mean  but  it  is  a  real  factor.  This  creeps 
into   our  conversation  when  no   Chinese  are  listening. 


298     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

When  I  first  came  out,  one  of  the  things  that  struck  me 
was  the  lack  of  reverence  of  missionaries  for  the  per- 
sonality of  individuals  such  as  a  Christian  ought  to  have. 
This  is  of  course  largely  influenced  by  the  fact  that  they 
do  not  have  this  respect  for  one  another.  Our  social  life 
is  for  the  most  part  almost  completely  cut  off  from  them. 
Of  course  I  know  that  this  is  partly  inevitable,  and  they 
on  their  part  don't  admit  us  into  their  families  the  way 
they  do  one  another.  However,  there  are  some  with 
whom  it  would  be  possible,  our  educated  clergymen  for 
instance,  and  the  English-speaking  students  who  have 
graduated  and  are  in  various  occupations.  I  can  sym- 
pathize with  the  missionaries  in  this  failure  of  ours  be- 
cause I  have  failed  in  this  respect  too,  but  I  am  making 
a  conscious  effort  to  overcome  this  defect.  If  I  were 
to  go  home  now,  I  would  not  feel  much  like  appealing 
for  money,  but  rather  that  the  Church  at  home  would 
give  itself  to  more  constant  prayer  that  we  out  here  would 
be  more  completely  filled  with  the  love  and  humility  of 
Christ  and  be  given  greater  wisdom  and  insight  as  to  how 
to  interpret  this  love.  I  want  the  Church  at  home  to 
know  where  we  are  failing,  for  I  feel  that,  as  a  body, 
we  are  failing  very  greatly  to  manifest  the  atoning  life  of 
Christ.  It  is  easy  to  help  in  famine  work,  or  to  do  what 
we  can  to  protect  them  during  fighting  compared  to 
humbling  ourselves  before  them  as  individuals,  and  hav- 
ing enough  sympathetic  insight  that  we  can  sense  their 
feeling  about  matters.  I  remember  one  of  my  teachers, 
whom.  I  learned  to  love  greatly,  often  used  to  say  that 
the  greatest  mystery  of  all  to  Paul  was  the  unity  of  the 
human  race  in  Christ.  Being  brought  up  such  a  strict 
Jew  accounted  for  his  wonder.  I  can  better  appreciate 
Paul's  wonder  now." 

7.  The  absolute  unselfishness  of  the  missionary  move- 
ment needs  to  be  guarded  with  scrupulous  care.  Other 
agencies  of  international  influence  may  properly  include 
an  element  of  self-interest.  "  The  banker,"  said  Mr. 
Seligman,  referring  to  the  negotiations  attending  such 
transactions  as  the  Chinese  loans,  "never  loses  sight  of 


THE  EELATIONS  OF  EAST  AND  WEST     299 

the  resulting  advantage  to  accrue  to  his  own  country." 
The  missionary  ought  to  lose  sight  of  every  such  ad- 
vantage utterly.  The  enterprise  should  be  stripped  of 
every  aspect  of  interest.  It  goes  out  to  the  nations,  ask- 
ing nothing,  seeking  nothing,  naked  of  every  political 
alliance.  It  does  not  exist  to  promote  commerce,  to  se- 
cure for  the  nations  from  which  it  comes  any  more  good- 
will of  the  people  to  whom  it  goes  than  it  seeks  to  secure 
for  all  other  nations.  Our  American  missionaries  are 
not  in  China  to  promote  trade  or  intercourse  or  better 
feeling  between  China  and  the  United  States.  They  are 
there  to  advance  the  cause  of  human  unity,  to  hasten 
the  day  when  all  men  shall  be  brothers,  to  bind  not  two 
races  together  in  political  and  commercial  relationship, 
but  to  bind  all  men  together  in  Christ.  As  Professor 
Reinsch  writes,  "  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  suc- 
cess and  the  moral  authority  of  missions  is  being  jeop- 
ardized by  their  connection  with  politics,  and  by  the  polit- 
ical purposes  which,  often  against  their  will,  they  are 
made  to  subserve.  The  missionary  who  goes  forth  un- 
aided to  face  countless  hardships,  and  to  battle  against 
the  hostility  of  nature  and  of  savage  men,  merits  the 
respect  of  all,  and  gives  the  best  kind  of  guarantee  of  his 
aims  and  intentions.  But  when  the  State  stands  ready 
to  turn  his  high-minded  and  unselfish  heroism  into  a 
source  of  material  gain  to  itself,  and  to  make  use  of  it  for 
purposes  of  national  expansion,  there  is  danger  that  the 
missionary  may  lose  moral  power  and  be  looked  upon  as 
a  mere  political  emissary.  Moreover,  the  unity  of  Chris- 
tian missionary  work  is  liable  to  be  destroyed  by  having 
its  field  of  work  broken  up  arbitrarily  into  national  areas. 
Tendencies  such  as  these  should  be  earnestly  discouraged 
in  order  that  the  missions  may  retain  their  value  as 
agencies  of  redemption  and  improvement.     Missionaries 


300     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

in  all  parts  of  the  world  are  voicing  their  opposition  to 
the  close  connection  of  missions  with  politics,  which 
destroys  the  confidence  of  the  natives  and  robs  the  mis- 
sionary of  his  influence  as  a  protector  of  the  native 
against  every  kind  of  exploitation."  This  is  justly  spoken. 
Missions  must  be  saved  from  any  such  confusion  for  the 
reasons  of  which  Professor  Reinsch  has  spoken  and  for 
the  deeper  reasons  which  have  been  stated. 

Over  the  inner  doorway  of  the  Institute  which  Dr. 
Whitewright  has  built  up  in  Tsinanfu,  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  missionary  agencies  in  the  world,  is  this  in- 
scription, "  The  aim  of  this  institution  is  to  show  through 
all  its  agencies  God  manifest  in  nature,  in  the  world,  and 
in  the  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ  the  Saviour  of  mankind. 

"  It  seeks  to  illustrate  human  progress  and  the  prin- 
ciples on  which  that  progress  must  be  forwarded;  to 
enlighten  in  all  that  makes  for  the  welfare  of  China  and 
the  Chinese  people;  to  bring  East  and  West  together  in 
the  knowledge  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brother- 
hood of  man. 

" '  Have  we  not  all  one  Father,  hath  not  one  God 
created  us  all  ? ' — Malachi. 

" '  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men.' — 
St.  Paid/' 

After  all,  are  not  these  the  great  missionary  problems? 
How  to  generate  a  spontaneous,  unsubsidized  and  self- 
sustained  evangelism  in  native  churches  made  up  of  truly 
believing,  growing  Christian  men  and  women;  how  to 
secure  in  these  churches  a  leadership  true,  and  bold  and 
freely  led  of  God ;  how  to  keep  and  increase  the  personal 
and  individual  service  in  the  midst  of  the  heavy  institu- 
tional and  general  activities  of  missions ;  how  to  bathe  the 
work  in  sympathy  and  comprehension,  lifting  it  above  all 
suspicion  and  spiritual  contractions;  how  to  apply  the 


THE  EELATIONS  OP  EAST  AND  WEST  ^  301 

same  sympathy  and  comprehension  to  races  as  well  as 
to  individuals ;  and  how  to  be  ourselves  more  wise,  pow- 
erful, contagious  workmen.  "  What  I  long  for,"  wrote 
one  of  our  missionaries  in  Japan  as  we  came  away  from 
his  field,  "  is  more  courage  and  more  power.  These 
seem  to  me  to  be  the  great  needs."  Are  they  not  ?  What 
needs  can  be  greater  than  these?  The  need  of  the  per- 
fect love  that  casts  out  all  fear  and  of  the  strength  made 
perfect  in  weakness  which  says,  "  My  Father  worketh 
and  I  work." 


XV 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORLD  TO-DAY 

IF  ever  there  was  a  time  when  selfishness  in  individ- 
uals or  in  nations  appeared  mean  and  insufferable, 
that  time  is  now.  Almost  all  the  peoples  of  the 
world  are  calling  out  for  help  and  for  sympathy.  We 
are  told  in  the  life  of  St.  Paul  that  one  night  he 
dreamed  that  a  man  from  the  Balkans  came  and  asked 
him  to  cross  over  the  Hellespont  and  do  some  work  in 
Europe.  In  response  to  that  call  of  one  man  the  whole 
course  of  St.  Paul's  life  was  changed.  The  whole 
course  of  human  history  was  changed  as  well.  We  are 
concerned  to-day,  not  with  one  man  whom  we  hear 
speaking  to  us  in  a  dream,  but  we  are  seeing  in  the  flesh 
hundreds  of  millions  of  men  who  are  asking  us  to  give 
our  help  and  our  sympathy  to  the  lands  to  which  they 
belong. 

In  response  to  this  appeal  one  may  see  very  clearly 
two  diverse  tendencies  acting  inside  the  Christian  Church. 
One  is  the  tendency  of  contraction,  the  Church  huddling 
in  upon  herself  or  upon  the  soil  of  her  own  nation,  or, 
maybe,  enlarging  her  sympathies  so  as  to  take  in  the 
needs  of  kindred  peoples,  but  as  regards  the  far  ends  of 
the  earth  asking  whether  she  would  not  better  abridge 
and  curtail  somewhat  those  distant  and  remote  activities. 
There  is  a  second  tendency  of  postponement,  the  Church 
talking  about  future  world  conditions  and  the  part  she  is 
to  have  in  the  great  tasks  elsewhere  after  all  our  own 
home  problems  are  solved  and  our  home  needs  are  met. 

302 


THE  CHUECH  AND  THE  WOELD  TO-DAY    303 

We  make  our  protest  against  these  two  tendencies. 
The  Christian  Church  is  doomed,  if,  on  the  one  hand,  she 
begins  now  to  hmit  the  performance  of  her  duties  and 
to  abridge  the  outgo  of  her  world  sympathy,  and  if,  on 
the  other  hand,  to-day  she  begins  to  talk  not  of  the  work 
that  she  is  to  do  this  very  hour  in  the  world,  but  of  the 
work  that  she  intends  to  do  one  year,  three  years,  or  five 
years  from  now.  We  protest  against  these  two  tendencies 
because  we  believe  that  the  only  Christianity  that  can 
have  any  living  power  in  our  own  nation  to-day,  or  that 
can  have  any  power  in  the  work  of  reconstructing  the 
world,  is  a  Christianity  that  does  not  shirk  any  of  its 
duties,  but  that  meets  the  demands  of  its  entire  world 
task. 

After  all,  if  there  is  not  vitality  enough  in  a  religion 
to  carry  it  out  to  its  work  at  the  ends  of  the  earth  there 
is  not  vitality  enough  in  that  religion  to  do  its  work  stand- 
ing still.  All  the  religion  in  the  world  to-day  that  has 
any  power  or  vitality  is  "  going  religion,"  religion  that  is 
both  the  product  and  source  of  the  foreign  missionary 
undertaking.  The  churches  and  universities  that  we  see 
around  us  would  not  be  here  if  it  were  not  for  foreign 
missions.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  no  Christianity  in 
the  world  to-day  except  the  Christianity  that  is  due  to 
the  foreign  missionary  activity  of  the  Church.  Chris- 
tianity utterly  died  out  in  the  land  of  its  origin.  There 
is  no  Christianity,  even  In  the  land  where  Christianity  be- 
gan, except  what  was  brought  back  as  a  reimport  from 
the  result  of  the  missionary  activities  of  St.  Paul  and 
the  early  Church.  We  would  have  no  Christianity  and 
no  Christian  Church  on  earth  If  it  were  not  for  what 
the  foreign  missionary  enterprise  has  done  to  perpetuate 
it.  Religion  dies  if  it  does  not  attempt  always  and  reso- 
lutely to  conquer  the  whole  world. 


304     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

We  protest  against  these  two  tendencies,  not  only  for 
the  sake  of  the  life  of  Christianity,  but  also  in  the  name 
of  fairness  and  common  honesty.  Either  Christianity  is 
a  good  thing  or  it  is  not  a  good  thing.  If  it  is  not  a  good 
thing,  then  we  ought  to  discard  it.  If  it  is  a  good  thing, 
then  we  ought  to  distribute  it.  And  we  have  no  right  to 
set  any  bounds  around  that  distribution.  If  Christianity 
is  a  good  thing  for  us,  we  are  under  obligation  to  give  it 
to  all  men  everywhere  in  the  world.  If  it  is  any  good 
for  me,  it  is  because  it  is  good  for  every  man,  and  I  am 
bound  to  pass  it  on  to  every  other  man.  There  is  no 
Christianity  in  the  world  to  which  any  man  can  lay  claim 
as  exclusively  his  own,  by  which  he  can  separately  de- 
velop himself,  by  which  he  can  simply  save  his  own  soul 
and  stop  there.  The  only  corporate  Christianity  in  the 
world  that  the  Master  and  Founder  would  recognize  as 
His  is  the  Christianity  which  its  possessors  try  to  share 
with  every  man — not  only  with  the  man  who  is  their  near 
neighbour.  We  have  something  that  we  are  bound  to 
share  with  all  the  world,  not  with  New  York  City  alone, 
not  with  the  American  nation  only,  not  with  the  Western 
races  of  the  world  only,  but  which  we  are  bound  to  carry 
to  every  man  and  every  woman  and  every  child  every- 
where, unless  some  one  else  is  already  doing  it. 

We  protest  against  these  tendencies  because  every  need 
that  led  to  the  establishment  of  the  missionary  enterprise 
in  the  past  exists,  intensified  and  accentuated,  to-day. 
If  men  have  needed  Jesus  Christ  in  the  years  gone  by, 
does  any  one  of  us  need  to  be  told  that  they  need  Him 
just  as  much,  and  that  this  old  world  needs  Him  more 
to-day,  that  if  we  need  Him,  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  in  the  world  needs  Him,  in  the  same  way?  And 
on  the  other  hand  if  the  people  of  China  or  India  can 
get  along  without  Him,  the  people  of  New  York  can 


THE  CHUECH  AND  THE  WOELD  TO-DAY    305 

get  along  without  Him  just  as  well.  Men  object  to  our 
carrying  Jesus  Christ  to  the  Far  East  and  to  the  Far 
South  to-day.  But  they  have  no  quarrel  with  us.  Their 
quarrel  is  with  the  Incarnation,  for  if  it  is  not  necessary 
for  Christ  to  go  to  China  to-day,  it  was  not  necessary 
for  Christ  to  come  to  Palestine  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago.  He  was  less  needed  for  Judaism  then  than  He  is 
needed  for  Hinduism,  Confucianism,  Buddhism,  and 
paganism  to-day. 

AL  the  need  that  there  was  for  the  Atonement  in  the 
beginning  exists  to-day  in  every  nation  of  the  world. 
Men  need  Christ  and  they  need  Him  now.  They  need 
Him  for. their  bodies'  sake.  Where  in  the  world  are  men 
hungry  to-day  except  where  the  Gospel  has  not  come 
really  home  to  the  lives  of  men?  Did  you  ever  stop  to 
think  that  the  great  deserts  are  within  the  bounds  of  the 
non-Christian  religions,  and  that  many  of  these  deserts 
were  made  by  these  religions?  The  great  racial  assassi- 
nations have  been  under  the  aegis  of  great  non-Christian 
faiths.  Only  where  Christ  has  gone  are  men's  lives 
deemed  sacred,  have  men's  bodies  been  fed,  have  the 
common,  elementary  needs  of  life  been  met.  If  Christ 
were  King  in  the  world  to-day,  there  would  not  be  a 
hungry  mouth  anywhere  under  the  sun,  nor  one  little 
crying  child. 

Men  need  Christ  to-day  not  for  their  bodies'  sake 
only.  The  moral  needs  of  the  world  are  as  deep  now 
as  they  were  when  Christ  came,  and  they  are  everywhere. 
If  they  are  in  America,  they  are  in  every  land.  Where 
Christ's  Influence  has  never  been  felt  even  so  slightly 
as  in  our  own  land  there  those  moral  needs  are  deeper 
and  darker  still.  Christianity  is  the  only  religion  in  the 
world  that  forbids  polygamy.  Every  other  religion  either 
allows  it  or  encourages  or  enjoins  it.    In  a  world  like  this 


306     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WORLD 

there  are  abysmal  moral  needs  rooted,  many  of  them,  in 
the  unjust  treatment  of  womanhood,  that  call  for  Christ. 

There  are  everywhere,  as  there  are  in  our  hearts,  deep, 
unsatisfied  spiritual  needs.  Nothing  else  ever  contented 
us  until  we  found  Him.  Nothing  else  will  ever  content 
them  until  they  find  Him.  *'  Thou,  O  Christ,"  we  sing, 
"  art  all  I  want  " — and  Christ  is  all  that  every  man  wants. 
We  protest  against  any  denial  of  Christ  to  the  world. 
It  has  a  title  in  Him  equal  to  any  title  that  we  have. 
The  world  calls  for  Him  because  He  is  as  indispensable  to 
its  life  as  He  is  to  ours. 

Was  there  ever  a  day  when,  not  for  all  men  one  by 
one,  for  the  wants  of  their  individual  homes  and  hearts, 
but  in  one  great  mass  of  want,  t:ie  world's  need  of  Christ 
was  so  sharp  and  imperious  as  it  is  to-day?  Who  but 
Jesus  Christ  can  ever  bind  this  torn  and  discordant  world 
together?  We  tried  to  do  it  w4th  trade,  and  it  could  not 
be  done.  We  tried  to  do  it  with  diplomacy,  but  diplomacy 
failed.  We  have  tried  to  do  it  with  secular  education, 
but  secular  education  has  been  unequal  to  the  task. 
There  is  only  one  way  in  which  the  world  ever  can  be 
united  in  one :  "  And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth," 
said  Jesus  Christ,  "  will  draw  all  men  unto  Me."  In  the 
one  Head  of  all  humanity,  the  one  Shepherd  of  the  whole 
flock  of  every  race  and  every  people  and  every  tongue — 
only  there  can  any  hope  of  human  unity  ever  be  found. 
In  a  day  when  we  are  weary  of  strife  and  hatred  and 
war,  the  need  of  the  world  for  Christ  protests  against 
any  abridgment  of  our  will  and  purpose  to  share  Him 
now  with  all  the  life  of  men. 

And  we  believe  in  not  only  maintaining  all  that  we  have 
begun,  but  in  even  now  enlarging  and  extending  every  ef- 
fort to  carry  Christ  to  the  last  ends  of  the  world,  because 
we  know  what  carrying  Christ  will  signify  and  what  noth- 


THE  CHUECH  AND  THE  WOELD  TO-DAY   307 

ing  else  will  signify  to  mankind.  Men  often  say  that  they; 
do  not  believe  in  the  missionary  undertaking.  What  is  it  in 
tne  undertaking  that  they  do  not  believe  in?  Twenty- 
five  thousand  men  and  women  have  gone  out,  not  for 
money's  sake,  not  for  honour  or  earthly  gain.  They  have 
given  up  everything  and  have  settled  in  the  midst  of  un- 
appreciative  millions  of  people.  They  have  made  friends 
with  them.  They  have  made  their  own  lives  a  part  of 
their  life.  The  missionaries  are  there  for  nothing  else 
than  to  be  kind  and  Christlike  to  the  peoples  to  whom 
they  have  gone.  Is  there  anything  in  that  ministry  in 
which  a  man  cannot  believe?  They  have  gathered  over 
two  million  little  boys  and  girls  together  in  schools  in 
those  lands  to  prepare  them  for  the  manhood  and  the 
womanhood  that  is  remaking  the  nations  of  the  earth. 
Is  there  anything  in  that  with  which  any  one  can  dis- 
agree? They  treated  in  their  hospitals  lais  last  year 
more  people  than  the  entire  population  of  Greater  New 
York,  opening  the  eyes  of  the  blind,  enabling  the  lame 
to  walk,  enablmg  the  deaf  to  hear,  curing  sickness  and 
disease  and  banishing  pain.  Is  there  anything  in  that  of 
which  men  disapprove?  They  lay  down  their  lives  for 
their  brethren  as  they  did  in  China  during  the  Boxer  up- 
rising. Is  there  a  greater  love  than  that  that  men  can 
have  ?  The  only  life  that  ever  can  be  wasted  is  life  that 
is  not  laid  down  in  ways  like  that.  Life  that  is  laid  down, 
seed  fashion  in  the  soil — there  is  no  waste  to  that.  It 
'Springs  up  and  bears  abundant  harvest  in  changing  things. 
In  changing  the  world,  in  the  fruitage  that  lasts  beyond 
death  and  the  grave. 

Because  we  know,  having  seen  It  with  our  own  eyes 
and  shared  In  it  with  our  own  hands,  what  the  enterprise 
of  Christ  Is  accomplishing  throughout  the  world,  we  pro- 
test against  the  common  tendency  in  men's  thoughts  that 


308     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

would  hold  that  enterprise  in  abeyance  until  some  future 
day  or  discountenance  it  either  by  indifference  or  by 
antagonism. 

There  are  great  needs  in  Europe.  There  are  hungry 
people  to  be  fed  in  many  lands,  and  there  are  thirty  mil- 
lions of  human  beings  in  India  who  never  know  what 
it  is  to  have  enough  to  eat,  who  say  if  only  they  could  be 
fed  adequately  for  two  days  they  would  be  willing  to  lie 
down  and  die.  There  are  millions  of  little  children  in 
Asia  every  night  who  would  cry  themselves  to  sleep  in 
their  hunger  and  want  of  bread  but  for  the  familiar 
monotony  of  their  suffering.  For  the  sake  of  the  world's 
need,  which  only  Christ's  Gospel  can  supply,  we  make  our 
appeal  to-day  more  earnestly  and  imperatively  than  in 
any  past  day,  that  Christ's  last  command  should  not  be 
postponed  for  an  interval  of  months  or  years.  It  is 
valid  and  effective  now. 

It  would  be  easy  to  gather  up  the  witnesses  and  let 
them  bear  testimony  to  the  truth  of  these  statements. 

You  may  have  read  what  the  Chinese  Ambassador  to 
Washington  recently  said  in  Chicago,  when  without  any- 
body's suggestion,  he  bore  his  testimony  to  what  his  na- 
tion needed,  and  to  the  men  and  to  the  women  who  were 
meeting  his  nation's  need : 

"  I  have  outlined  the  work  of  the  American  mission- 
aries in  my  land  in  order  to  show  their  activities  and  the 
utter  unselfishness  of  their  purpose.  Some  of  them  de- 
vote five  or  ten  years  to  China,  while  others  spend  their 
whole  lives  there.  But  whether  for  a  longer  or  for  a 
shorter  period,  they  all  do  it  with  the  desire  to  give  and 
without  the  hope  of  gain  to  themselves  beyond  the  gain 
of  satisfaction  in  service  rendered  and  in  duty  done. 
These  men  penetrate  the  innermost  parts  of  our  country 
and  mingle  with  the  people  as  members  of  the  local  com- 
munity.    Neither  hardships  nor  difficulties  deter  them. 


THE  OHUECH  AND  THE  WOELD  TO-DAY    309 

In  the  last  half  century  troubles  sometimes  arose  between 
them  and  the  local  people;  but  they  were  always  peace- 
ibly  settled  without  the  display  of  military  or  naval 
power  on  the  part  of  the  United  States,  and  without  the 
loss  of  political  or  territorial  rights  on  the  part  of  China, 
so  that  by  contrast  and  comparison  the  people  of  China 
have  long  come  to  recognize  the  difference  between  the 
missionaries  from  the  United  States  and  the  people  from 
other  lands.  For  this  reason,  they  have  manifested  their 
readiness  to  receive  and  welcome  them  with  open  arms. 
Nothing  which  individual  Americans  have  done  in  China 
has  more  strongly  impressed  the  Chinese  mind  with  the 
sincerity  and  genuineness  and  altruism  of  American 
friendship  for  China  than  this  spirit  of  service  and  self- 
sacrifice  so  beautifully  demonstrated  by  American  mis- 
sionaries." And  he  was  thinkmg  not  merely  of  social 
benefits  rendered.  "As  religious  teachers,"  he  added, 
"  they  have  made  the  Christian  faith  known  to  the  mil- 
lions of  China  who  had  not  heard  its  truths  before  and 
thereby  gave  them  new  hope  and  a  new  source  of  in- 
spiration. It  is  impossible  to  estimate  how  much  happi- 
ness and  comfort  they  have  brought  to  those  who  found 
life  miserable  because  of  its  lack  of  spiritual  vision." 

In  a  little  spot  near  the  wall  of  Mukden,  the  old  capital 
of  China  in  Manchuria,  is  a  grave,  and  near  by  a  tablet 
placed  on  the  wail  of  the  new  medical  school  and  hospital. 
Four  years  ago  I  stood  in  front  of  that  tablet  to  the 
memory  of  young  Arthur  Jackson,  who  led  his  school 
at  Liverpool,  and  who  was  one  of  the  best-known  athletes 
and  scholars  of  his  day  in  Cambridge  University  and 
who  had  gone  out  in  the  fall  of  1910  as  a  medical  mis- 
sionary to  Manchuria.  A  month  later  the  pneumonic 
plague  began  to  come  iown  from  the  north.  The  Chinese 
hunters  had  been  sending  down  their  marmot  skins,  and 
the  deadly  germs  had  been  carried  in  them.  Before  the 
Chinese  Government  had  taken  adequate  precaution,  the 
pestilence  had  worked  its  way  down  from  Harbin  to 


310     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

Mukden.  The  death  rate  was  one  hundred  per  cent.  Not 
one  man,  woman,  or  child  attacked  recovered.  When 
China  learned  what  an  awful  terror  was  moving  down 
upon  her  four  hundred  millions,  she  stood  dumb  and 
aghast.  Arthur  Jackson  laid  down  all  his  other  work, 
went  down  to  the  railroad  station  at  Mukden  to  erect  a 
barrier  between  that  oncoming  pestilence  and  the  help- 
less masses  of  Chinese  behind  him.  Day  after  day, 
clothed  in  oilskin  boots  and  a  long  white  robe,  with  a 
bag  over  his  head,  breathing  through  a  sponge,  he  went 
about  his  work  segregating  the  diseased  and  visiting 
every  railway  car  that  came  in  and  separating  every  sus- 
pected Chinese,  until  at  last  he  had  stemmed  '.he  fatal 
tide.  Then  when  his  work  was  done  he  discovered  one 
day  in  his  own  sputum  the  blood  traces  that  told  him  of 
the  inevitable  end,  and  in  a  few  hours  the  great  Christlike 
life  had  come  to  its  close.  They  carried  him  around  the 
walls  by  night  and  buried  him  outside  the  gates.  Two 
days  afterwards,  in  the  British  Consulate,  they  held  their 
little  memorial  service.  The  old  Chinese  Viceroy  made 
a  speech.  He  never  had  known  of  anything  like  this. 
He  had  never  seen  a  man  lay  down  his  life  in  sacrificial 
love.  All  this  was  the  revelation  of  a  new  principle  of 
life  and  character.    This  was  his  speech : 

"  We  have  shown  ourselves  unworthy  of  the  great 
trust  laid  upon  us  by  our  Emperor.  We  have  allowed  a 
dire  pestilence  to  overrun  the  sacred  capital.  His  Maj- 
esty the  King  of  Great  Britain  shows  sympathy  with 
every  country  that  calamity  overtakes,  and  his  subject. 
Doctor  Jackson,  moved  by  his  sovereign  spirit,  with  the 
heart  of  the  Saviour  who  gave  His  life  to  deliver  the 
world,  responded  nobly,  and  we  asked  him  to  help  our 
country  in  its  need.  He  went  forth  to  help  us  in  our 
fight  daily.  Where  the  pestilence  lay  thickest,  amidst 
the  groans  of  the  dying,  he  struggled  to  cure  the  stricken 


THE  CHUECH  AKD  THE  WORLD  TO-DAY    311 

and  to  find  medicine  to  stay  the  evil.  Worn  by  his  ef- 
forts, the  pestilence  seized  him,  and  took  him  from  us 
long  before  his  time.  Our  sorrow  is  beyond  all  measure ; 
our  grief  too  deep  for  words.  Doctor  Jackson  was  a 
young  man  of  high  education  and  great  natural  ability. 
He  came  to  Manchuria  with  the  intention  of  spreading 
medical  knowledge,  religious  comfort,  and  other  blessings 
on  the  Eastern  people.  In  the  pursuit  of  his  ideal,  he  was 
cut  down.  The  mission  has  lost  a  recruit  of  great  prom- 
ise; the  Chinese  Government,  a  man  who  gave  his  life 
in  his  desire  to  help  them.  O  Spirit  of  Doctor  Jackson, 
we  pray  thee  intercede  for  the  twenty  million  people  of 
Manchuria  and  ask  the  Lord  of  Heaven  to  take  away 
this  pestilence,  so  that  we  may  once  more  lay  our  heads 
in  peace  upon  our  pillows.  In  life  you  were  brave ;  now 
you  are  an  exalted  spirit.  O  noble  spirit  who  sacrificed 
your  life,  please  help  us  still  and  look  down  in  kindness 
upon  us  all." 

Remembering  the  men  like  him,  the  thousands  of  them, 
scattered  up  and  down  the  non-Christian  lands  amid 
pestilence  that  will  not  postpone  itself,  amid  sin  and  moral 
and  spiritual  needs  that  are  present  and  insistent  realities, 
we  plead  with  Christian  men  and  women  to  make  of  their 
lives  a  new  consecration,  and  to  resolve,  in  the  face  of 
the  new  conditions  that  vv^e  confront  to-day,  upon  a  larger 
and  fuller  measure  of  obedience.  Our  fathers,  in  the 
dark  days  during  and  following  the  Civil  War,  did  not 
feel  justified  in  demitting  their  missionary  responsibili- 
ties. In  the  darkest  days  of  the  War  they  maintained 
and  enlarged  their  undertaking.  The  Presbyterian  Board 
testified  in  the  fourth  year  of  the  Civil  War  that  it  had 
never  withdrawn  a  single  missionary  or  shut  up  a  single 
station  or  withheld,  for  financial  reasons,  a  single  man  or 
woman.  Shall  we,  with  vastly  more  wealth  than  they, 
not  do  our  full  duty?  If  there  ever  was  an  hour  when 
this  cause  was  needed,  it  is  needed  now.    This  is  no  day 


312     THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  NEW  WOELD 

to  surrender  any  international  bond,  any  instrumentality 
of  Christianity  that  overleaps  racial  division  and  bridges 
the  chasms  that  separate  the  peoples  of  mankind.  This 
is  the  day  for  us  with  every  last  sacrifice  we  can  make 
to  maintain  and  expand  our  activities  to  make  Christ 
known  to  the  whole  world.  We  have  sung  again  up  and 
down  this  land  the  words  of  Julia  Ward  Howe : 

"  He  hath  sounded  forth  the  trumpet  that  shall  never  call 
retreat; 
He  is  sifting  out  the  hearts  of  men  before  His  judgment 
seat." 

How  is  He  sifting  them  out?  By  watching  whether  or 
not  they,  in  this  day,  follow  the  call  that  sounds  no  re- 
treat. The  Church  has  never  been  and  is  not  now  war- 
ranted in  huddling  in  upon  herself,  in  drawing  back  from 
her  most  distant  and  complete  devotion.  Now  of  all 
days  she  is  called  to  the  ends  of  the  world. 

We  recall  the  incident — it  may  be  apocryphal,  but  it 
has  truth  in  it — of  the  drummer  boy  in  one  of  Napoleon's 
campaigns  to  whom  the  great  commander  turned  in  an 
hour  when  the  cause  for  the  day  seemed  lost  and  said, 
"  Boy,  beat  me  a  retreat ! "  And  to  him  the  lad  dared 
to  reply,  "  Sire,  I  know  not  how.  Desaix  never  taught 
me  that;  but  I  can  beat  a  charge  that  will  make  the 
dead  fall  into  line!  I  beat  that  charge  at  I^di;  I  beat  it 
at  the  Pyramids.  Let  me  beat  it  now ! "  And  without 
waiting  for  the  word,  he  beat  his  charge  and  over  the 
dead  and  the  wounded,  over  the  breastworks  and  the 
batterymen,  he  led  the  way  to  victory.  To-day  let  us  not 
know  how  to  beat  any  retreat.  Let  us  hear  the  voice 
calling  now  more  clearly  and  more  appealingly  than  it 
ever  called  in  any  of  the  days  gone  by,  "  li  ye  love  me, 
ye  will  keep  my  commandments." 

What  did  He  command?    In  those  very  last  moments, 


THE  CHUECH  AND  THE  WOELD  TO-DAY    313 

His  chance  for  one  final  word,  until  the  sky  grows  ruddy 
with  the  hope  of  His  coming  again,  before  the  clouds 
caught  Him  up  out  of  sight  of  men,  this  was  His  com- 
mand, "  Ye  shall  be  my  witnesses  unto  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  world."  And  no  thunder  of  guns  across  the 
battle-fields  or  cry  of  trade  or  whisper  of  ease  in  peace 
can  drown  in  the  heart  of  the  Christian  man  or  the  Chris- 
tian Church  the  summons,  the  deathless  abiding  summons, 
of  those  last  words. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


THE  NEW  WORLD  ORDER 


PROK  A.  T.  ROBERTSON,  P.P.,  LLP. 

The  New  Citizenship 

The  Christian  Facing  a  New  World  Order. 
Net 

"Characterized  by  the  thoroughgoing,  wide-reaching 
scholarship  for  which  Professor  Robertson  is  internation- 
ally noted,  but  also  by  his  fine  common  sense,  felicity  of 
diction  and  strength  and  beauty  of  style.  It  is  a  book 
for  busy  laymen  and  book-reading  women,  as  well  as  for 
preachers." — Baptist  World. 

GEORGE  fVOOP   ANPERSON 

Problem— or  Opportunity? 

Which  is  it  the  Church  is  Now  Facing.  i2mo, 
cloth,  net 

Mr.  Anderson,  an  evangelist,  has  seen  service  with  the 
American  boys  on  the  battle-front,  and  impelled  by  his 
vivid  experiences  oversea,  addresses  himself  afresh  to  the 
problems  and  opportunities  now  facing  the  Christian 
church.  A  plea  for  a  more  devoted  working  and  applica- 
tion of  the  program  Christ  laid  out  for  His  followers,  to 
the  clamant  needs  of  humanity  at  large. 

C.  B.  iriLLIAMS,  Ph. P.,  P.P. 

Citizens  of  Two  Worlds 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

"A  volume  of  addresses  growing  out  of  the  spirit  of  this 
new  age  of  democracy  and  brotherhood,  which  speaks  to 
the  hearts  of  struggling  men  and  women  who  want  to 
solve  the  age's  economic  and  social  problems  by  following 
the  teachings  of  the  Nazarene.  Sermons  which  show  how 
to  reach  up  to  heaven  for  the  dynamic  and  inspiration  to 
reach  down  to  earth  and  help  its  needy  milliong."— CAm- 
tian  Work. 

friLLIAM  C.  SCHAEFFER,  P.P. 

The  Greater  Task 

Studies  in  Social  Service.    Cloth,  net 

"This  author  believes  that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  com- 
ing; that  it  has  come;  that  it  will  continue  to  come  in 
ever  greater  and  greater  power  and  glory.  He  writes 
with  force  and  illumination,  and  brings  home  with  great 
effectiveness,  both  to  the  individual  and  the  Church,  the 
sense  of  duty  and  the  broad  scope  of  obligation  and  op- 
portunity in  the  present  crisis.  A  book  of  real  leadership 
and  merit." — Christian  Guardian. 


AFTER  THE  WAR 


CHARLES  E.  JEFFERSON,  D.  D. 

What  the  War  Has  Taught  Us 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

From  first  to  last,  Dr.  Jefferson's  standpoint  is  that  of 
the  Christian  minister,  and,  chiefly,  his  book  is  concerned 
with  showing  how  the  War  has  supplied  the  Christian 
Church  with  new  and  vigorous  arguments  for  the  truth 
that  is  in  her,  together  with  new  and  poignant  illustra- 
tions of  the  fundamental  teachings  of  Jesus. 

THOMAS  TIPLAD  Y  {Chaplain)     Author  of  "  The  Crtss 
"""•^ ■  ait  he  Front'' ^ 

Social  Christianity  in  the  New  Era 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

A  reconstruction  message  for  every  one  interested  in 
the  Church  to-day.  The  work  of  a  man,  who  has  seen 
and  learned  much  of  the  average  man's  view  of  the 
Church  during  his  three  years  of  daily  army  intercourse. 

There  is  scarcely  a  side  of  social  life  not  touched  upon. 
It  is  a  book  of  Christian  idealism  which  will  make  leaders 
think  for  themselves  and  keep  on  thinking  until  remedies 
are  found. 

CHAPLAIN  TIPLADTS  OTHER  BOOKS 

The  Soul  of  the  Soldier 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

The  Cross  at  the  Front 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

"Among  the  great  mass  of  war  literature  these  books 
stand  out  as  of  unique  purpose  and  power.  They  are  like 
no  other,  and  no  others  are  like  them." — Cal.  Chr.  Advocate. 

NEJVELL  DJVIGHT  HILLIS 

Rebuilding  Ruined  Europe 

The  Human  Side  of  the  Problem.  i2mo,  cloth, 
net 

A  graphic  survey  of  the  appalling  havoc  wrought  by  the 
Great  War  throughout  the  whole  Continent  of  Europe, 
together  with  an  approximate  forecast  of  the  possibilities 
possessed  by  both  peoples  and  countries  for  rebuilding,  re- 
construction and  renewed  prosperity. 

PROF.    HUGH  BLACK  Author  of"  Friendship  r  ttt, 

"Le^  We  Forget" 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

Dr.  Black  subjects  Democracy,  Patriotism,  State-Rights, 
Religion,  War,  Peace,  Pacifism  and  the  League  of  Na- 
tions to  a  close,  searching  scrutiny,  indicating  how,  by  a 
just  and  sane  interpretation,  they  may  be  made  to  provide 
a  larger  incentive  to  truer  living,  and  a  finer  apprehension 
of  the  duties  and  responsibilities  of  world-citizenship. 


SIDELIGHTS  ON  THE  WAR 


HAROLD  C.  1VARREN 

With  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  in  France 

Souvenirs  of  a  Secretary.  Introduction  by  Ed- 
ward W.  Bok.    i2mo,  cloth,  net 

Mr.  Warren's  book  contributes  a  welcome  and  timely 
vindication  of  the  organization,  as  well  as  a  vastly  enter- 
taining personal  record  of  personal  adventure. 

GRACE  H,   KNAPP      Missionary  of  the  American  Board 

•  in  Armenia 

The  Tragedy  of  Bitlis 

A  Chapter  of  Armenia's  Suffering.  Illustrated, 
l2mo,  cloth,  net 

The  district  about  Lake  Van  in  Armenia  passed  through 
the  most  awful  of  that  sad  country's  terrible  experience. 
This  authentic  story  from  eye  witnesses  carries  the  utmost 
conviction  and  will  awaken  unstinted  sympathy. 

JAMES  I.  VANCE,  D.D, 

The  Silver  on  the  Iron  Cross 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

In  common  with  many  other  distinguished  preachers  Dr. 
Vance  has  seen  service  overseas  with  the  American  Ex- 
peditionary Forces.  This  new  book  is  the  record  of  some 
of  the  scenes  witnessed,  and  the  impressions  left  upon  his 
mind.  Despite  its  tenderness,  the  book  resounds  with  a 
note  of  optimism;  for  as  Dr.  Vance  says:  "The  Huu's 
war-cross  is  made  of  iron,  but  it  is  edged  with  silver." 

WILLIAM  CARTER,   D.D. 

The  Gates  of  Janus 

An  Epic  Story  of  the  World  War.    Net 

"A  versified  history  of  the  Great  World  Struggle,  cov- 
ering the  whole  period  from  the  day  when  the  dogs  of 
war  were  unleashed,  down  to  the  signing  of  the  armistice. 
"A  valuable  contribution  to  the  literature  of  the  war.  It 
is  an  effective  example  of  the  poetry  of  action  and  will 
win  its  way  when  a  more  prosaic  form  of  delineation 
would  miss  its  aim." — Dr.  Charles  H.  Parkhurst. 

VOSNJAK  BOGUMIL     Member  Jugoslav  Com.,  Lecturer 

•  ■  at  University  of  Zagreb  {Croatia) 

A  Bulwark  Against  Germany 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

"Instructs  ug  about  that  branch  of  the  Slavs  which, 
curiously  enough,  seems  the  least  known — the  Slovenes. 
The  present  volume  explains  their  historical,  political,  so- 
cial, and  economical  evolution,  and  abundantly  shows  that, 
as  the  westertimost  branch  of  the  TugO'-lavs,  they  do  con- 
ititute  a  bulwark  against  Germany.'" — The  Outlook, 


MISSIONS  AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 

CAROLINE  ATJVATER  MASON  Author  or  The  Liau 
■■  Green  God, '  etc. 

Conscripts  of  Conscience 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

A  plea  in  story  form  for  volunteers  for  Medical  Mission 
■work  in  the  Orient  by  a  -writer  of  recognized  literary  gifts. 
The  heroic,  the  sacrificial,  have  been  in  continued  evidence 
during  our  World-War.  A  parallel  field  of  opportunity  is 
here  presented  with  every  promise  of  equal  stimulus  to 
times  of  peace. 

ROBERT  E.  SPEER,  LL.D. 

The  Gospel  and  the  New  World 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

Dr.  Speer's  qualifications  for  reviewing  the  situation 
need  no  recital.  It  is  sufficient  to  indicate  that  with  his 
customary  force  and  clarity,  he  covers  the  whole  subject 
of  Foreign  Missions  in  the  light  and  darkness  of  war. 

CHARLES  L.  THOMPSON,  P.P. 

The  Soul  of  America 

The  Contribution  of  Presbyterian  Home  Mis- 
sions.   Illustrated,  cloth,  net 

A  lucid,  clearly  defined  statement  of  what  has  been  done 
on  the  North  American  continent,  in  Home  Mission  field 
by  the  Presbyterian  Church. 

WINIFREP  W.  BARTON 

John  P.  Williamson 

A  Brother  to  the  Sioux.  Drawings  by  John 
Redowl.    Illustrated,  i2mo,  cloth,  net       ^ 

"On  the  prairies  Dr.  Williamson  spent  a  life  of  over 
eighty  years  crowded  with  adventures,  hardships  and  toil 
as  he  laid  out  trails  for  civilization.  Such  men  are  our 
truest  empire  builders." — Albert  Wens  in  The  Dakota 
Farmer. 

ELIZABETH  LEHMAN  MYERS 

A  Century  of  Moravian  Sisters 

A  Record  of  Christian  Community  Life.  Illus- 
trated by  F.  J.  Myers.    Cloth,  net 

"Gives  an  impetus  to  the  spirit  of  simple  faith  and 
practical  devotion  that  cannot  help  but  be  far-reaching  in 
its  cEtct."— Bethlehem  Times. 

friLLIAM  EARL  LA  RUE 

The  Foundations  of  Mormonitm 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  _ 

Bruce  Kinney  says:  "The  author  has  discovered  and 
here  brought  together  original  documents  bearing  on  the 
origin  and  history  of  all  branches  of  the  Mormon  Church. 
They  are  so  startling  that  they  must  be  either  accepted  or 

disproved/' 


ABOUT  OTHER  LANDS 


HENRY  CHUNG 

The  Oriental  Policy  of  the  United  States 

With  maps,  i2mo,  cloth,  net 

A  plea  for  the  policy  of  the  Open  Door  in  China,  pre- 
sented by  an  oriental  scholar  of  broad  training  and  deep 
sympathies.  The  history  of  American  diplomatic  relation- 
ships with  the  Orient,  the  development  of  the  various 
policies  and  influences  of  the  western  powers  in  China, 
and  the  imperilistic  aspirations  of  Japan  are  set  forth  ad- 
mirably. 

CHARLES  KENDALL  HARRINGTON 

Missionary  Amer.  Baptist  Ftrtign  Miss.  Society  to  Jafan 

Captain  Bickel  of  the  Inland  Sea 

Illustrated,  8vo.,  cloth,  net 

"Especially  valuable  at  this  hour,  because  it  throws  a 
flood  of  light  on  many  conditions  in  the  Orient  in  which 
all  students  of  neligious  and  social  questions  are  espe- 
cially interested.  We  would  suggest  that  pastors  generally 
retell  the  story  at  some  Sunday  evening  service,  for  here 
is  a  story  sensational,  thrilling,  informing  and  at  the  same 
time  a  story  of  great  spiritual  urgency  and  power." — 
W atchman-Bxaminer. 

HARRIET  NEWELL  NOTES        Canton,  China 

A  Light  in  the  Land  of  Sinim 

Forty-five  Years  in  the  True  Light  Seminary, 
1872-1917.    Fully  Illustrated,  8vo.,  net 

"An  authoritative  account  of  the  work  undertaken  and 
achieved  by  the  True  Light  Seminary,  Canton,  China, 
Mrs.  Noyes  has  devoted  practically  her  whole  life  to  this 
sphere  of  Christian  service,  and  the  record  here  presented 
is  that  of  her  own  labors  and  those  associated  with  her  ia 
missionary  activity  in  China,  covering  a  period  of  mor« 
than  forty-five  years." — Christian  Work. 

MRS.  H.   G.   UNDERWOOD 

Underwood  of  Korea 

A  Record  of  the  Life  and  Work  of  Horace  G. 
Underwood,  D.D.    Illustrated,  cloth,  net 

"An  intimate  and  captivating  story  of  one  who  labored 
nobly  and  faithfully  in  Korea  for  thirty-one  years,  pre- 
senting his  character,  consecration,  faith,  and  indomitable 
courage." — Missions. 


FAITH  AND  IMMORTALITY 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE 

What  Peace  Means 

l2mo,  boards,  net 

Dr.  van  Dyke's  striking  booklet  might  have  been  fitly 
called  "Peace  and  Immortality,"  for  it  shows  us  a  dis- 
tinct connection  existing  between  the  peace  that  comes  as 
the  fruit  of  individual  sacrifice  and  the  peace  that  is  the 
promised  heritage  of  "the  faithful."  Another  of  those  un- 
mistakable brochure-gems,  familiarly  known  as  a  van  Dyke 
gift-book. 

MALCOLM  J.  MacLEOD,  P.P. 

Songs  in  the  Night 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

"Satisfying,  cheering,  written  for  those  who  have  been 
forced  to  drink  of  the  bitter  waters  of  Marah;  for  those 
beset  with  doubt;  for  those  who  despair.  Studded  with 
choicely-chosen  illustration,  and  fitting  literary  allusion, 
each  chapter  has  a  message." — Christian  Work, 

E.  M.  MILLIGAN,  P.P. 

Where  Are  the  Dead? 

i2mo,  cloth,  net 

A  faithful  guide  to  the  correct  understanding  of  Scrip- 
tural truth  as  taught  everywhere  in  the  Bible.  It  is  a 
careful  study  with  copious  references,  affording  _  true 
spiritual  consolation  to  those  who  place  their  faith  in  di- 
vine revelation. 

BISHOP  EPJVIN  P.  MOUZON 

Does  God  Care? 

An  answer  to  Certain  Questions  Touching 
Providence  and  Prayer.    i6nio,  cloth,  net 

In  a  concise  and  closely-reasoned  way,  Bishop  Mouzon 
meets  the  question  with  an  unflinching  affirmative,  pre- 
senting a  strong,  forceful  argument  for  the  benignity  of 
Divine  Providence  and  the  prevailing  power  of  prayer. 

/.  PATERSON-SMYTH  Tenth  Edition 

The  Gospel  of  the  Hereafter 

Revised  and  Re-edited,  cloth,  net 

"A  dispassionate  study  of  immortality.  It  is  a  bold, 
honest,  heroic  book.  He  believes  and  can  reason  in  faith 
and  hope.  The  book  is  preeminently  worth  while.  It  is 
adapted  to  make  one  think,  feel  and  Sict."— Watchman- 
Bxaminer, 


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